Bottling tomorrow, question about CO2 volume?

[OptimusJay]

Tomorrow I will be bottling my beer, thread here https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/first-brew-completed-imperial-pale-ale-modifications-367793/

I have a question about the desired CO2 volume? I used this site http://www.northernbrewer.com/priming-sugar-calculator/
And based on something between an American Pale Ale and a Double IPA I am thinking I would shoot for 2.3 CO2 volume. Does that sound right?

My kit came with 5oz of the priming sugar. As my beer is currently cold crashing at temps around 40F I suppose I will be using considerably less than the 5oz. Am I good to take the beer's temp, plug it into the NB's Priming sugar calculator, and let the fun begin?

Thanks,
Jay

 

[Jayhem]

IMHO: I think people spend too much time worrying about C02 volumes.

Every beer I've made (25+ batches now) I've used 4-5 oz of table sugar in 5.0-5.5 gallons of beer and always had perfect carbonation, never a bottle bomb, never a lack of carbonation and never a gusher.

I fail to understand why the beer's temp changes the amount of required sugar for yeast carbonation (which must occur at room temp ~70F)

 

[AnOldUR]

I fail to understand why the beer's temp changes the amount of required sugar for yeast carbonation (which must occur at room temp ~70F)

It's all about the amount of CO2 already in suspension. At colder temperatures liquids will hold more CO2. You only have to add enough sugar to make up the difference between what's already there and what you need to meet the volume for that style.

That being said, the actual temperature of your beer at bottling time is not what's important. It's the highest temperature that your beer was held at after fermentation was complete that matters. Dropping the temperature during cold crashing does not introduce any new CO2 and you have vented off everything up to the amount that it had the potential to hold before you crashed.

 

[Jayhem]

Dropping the temperature during cold crashing does not introduce any new CO2 and you have vented of everything up to the amount that it had the potential to hold before you crashed.

^ This is what I was trying to get at. You can't add more C02 once the beer has completed fermentation without introducing more fermentable sugars so the temp doesn't matter when cold crashing. You must warm up the beer again to condition in the bottles anyway.

 

[AnOldUR]

. . . temp doesn't matter when cold crashing. You must warm up the beer again to condition in the bottles anyway.

Temperature does matter. It's the highest temperature after fermentation that you need to consider when looking at the charts. For example, depending on d-rest temperature, a lager may never have seen a temperature higher than 50 degrees, so it would need less priming sugar to get the same volumes of CO2 than an ale that finished at 72 degrees.

 

[Jayhem]

Temperature does matter. It's the highest temperature after fermentation that you need to consider when looking at the charts. For example, depending on d-rest temperature, a lager may never have seen a temperature higher than 50 degrees, so it would need less priming sugar to get the same volumes of CO2 than an ale that finished at 72 degrees.

Of course you had to bring up lager. What % of homebrews are lagers?

I'm just saying that the differences between 1.9 volumes and 2.3 volumes is not something most homebrewers need to split hairs and worry much about for home consumption of their tasty ales.

 

[zachattack]

It's the highest temperature that your beer was held at after fermentation was complete that matters.

This. Just enter that temp into the calculator and don't worry about it further.

Jayhem, I can appreciate what you're saying about splitting hairs, but really OP just wanted to know what temperature to input. It's obvious that he's interested in carbing to a specific volume. Like AnOldUR said, thanks to Henry's Law the temperature can actually have a pretty significant effect on residual post-fermentation CO2, and many of us like to take this into account. It doesn't have to be complicated, just type a number into the calculator and you're done.