Bottling my Saison

[berndawg84]

So I'm about to bottle my third batch. The first 2 times I just followed the kit instructions so I'm trying to improve my process.

I'm bottling a 2.5 gallon batch of a basic Saison. I've read that they should be bottled at 2.5-3.2 C02 vol. I decided to go with 2.8 as a middle ground. Does that sound ok?

I'm going to use the NB calculator here to figure out my priming sugar needs:

http://www.northernbrewer.com/priming-sugar-calculator/

It asks for the current temperature of the beer. I think I've also read that for the temperature you should use what temperature you fermented at, not the current temp? I cold-crashed my carboy with some gelatin for the past 7 days, so my guess is that my beer is at about 40 F. Should I just use that temperature for the priming sugar calculator?

I fermented it mostly at around 76 degrees (the last few days I went up to 82 degrees). If I used 76 as my temp, instead of 40, I would end up adding 24 extra grams of priming sugar, which is a lot (At 40F, 2.8 vol of CO2 would be 54 grams of sugar, at 76F it would be 78 grams of sguar. Of course, the 40 degree beer will warm over time.

What is the best temperature for conditioning? Is it 70 F and above? My house tends to be cool, so I could probably condition around 62-65F. If I condition at that temp, do I need to end up conditioning for a longer period of time than if it were at 70F? Also, it seems like 3 weeks is better for bottle conditioning, not 2 weeks?

Also...do I need to add some of the yeast sediment from my carboy to each bottle to help with bottle conditioning? Although I guess if I tried to do that I'd get some hop and other trub too, which I don't. Or will my beer condition ok if I siphon just the liquid and no trub into my bottling bucket?

This is my first batch I've made without an extract kit, and it often seems like the kit instructions are lacking. Thanks in advance. I've been working on this beer for awhile so I really want to make sure it turns out as good as possible.

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

My understanding for the temp is that cool beer holds more CO2 in solution than warm beer, so since you had the smaller amount of CO2 before cold crashing, you won't have gained any CO2 just by cooling it. I hope someone will correct me if I'm wrong but I think you would use the 82 degrees value.

 

[ncbrewer]

This article http://byo.com/carbonation/item/1271-priming-with-sugar goes into some detail about priming. It mentions that lowering the temperature after fermentation is over doesn't increase the CO2 in the beer, as AZ said.

70 or above (I don't know the upper limit) is the normal conditioning temperature. I've conditioned at 65 in the winter, and it took 5 - 6 weeks to carb up, so I don't recommend it.

 

[berndawg84]

Thanks that helps. So according to the chart in that BYO article, At 77F fermentation, I would already have this level of CO2:

77 °F (25.0 °C) = 0.728 vols of CO2. So if I wanted to get 2.8 vols, I would need to add the equivalent of 2.072 vols of CO2. Is this a correction that most people use? My (perhaps wrong) impression was that people just using a priming calculator and don't necessarily factor in any carbonation already present in the beer. But then again, I could be wrong. I just don't want my beer to be under-carbed. Thanks!

 

[ncbrewer]

You don't have to do any correction as long as you enter the temperature - the calculators do the correction for you. At least one of the calculators even shows you the volumes of CO2 already in the beer and how many you need to add. One word of caution: they apparently use slightly different formulas, because the calculated sugar is a little different. Not being a chemist, I don't know which are the best, but the results are pretty close.

 

[berndawg84]

OK thanks that helps. So I guess the question now is, do I use the highest temp I fermented at (82F, but only for 3 days, it was mostly at 76), or do I use the current temp (about 40F, it's been sitting in the fridge for a week).

 

[PlinyTheMiddleAged]

Use the high temp - there's probably not much difference in needed sugar between 76 and 82. Like someone mentioned earlier, once the beer is warmed up, the CO2 is gone. It doesn't come back when you cold crash.