Brewed again today- Bavarian Hefeweizen from NB

[Soulshine2]

First time in a long time I did a straight recipe . Wife likes her Hefs and shes down to her last 12 pack,shes been slowly drinking it until I reminded her ."You know, I can make more". So, this was also the first time from Northern Brewer too.
Typical 6 hr day. Everything went well, hit OG of 1.050 and a healthy 5 gallons +. Ran the wort into the fermenter with the ball valve cracked so it got aerated very well. Had quite a froth on top and temp was spot on at 60*F so I pitched yeast Safale 06(supplied) right away and shoved a blowoff tube in the bung because I'm pretty sure its going to be a good one. Saved the overrun for (speiss?) priming the beer once its ready to bottle.
Now, once I get to that , how do I know how much to use in priming (bottles)? I have 32 ounces in a growler plus a 16 oz grolsch bottle worth that wouldn't fit in the carboy, so 48 ounces .
Do I need to calculate the gravity back to sugar content somehow? I'd like to try this instead of using priming sugar ,so this would be a true "kraeusened" beer , right? Just need some calculation help . Thanks all around.

 

[Soulshine2]

checked it 5 minutes ago. 2 inches of heavy white kraeusen on top , blow off bubbling away.

 

[Vale71]

The formula is quite complicated. Thankfully there are online calculators but the only ones I know of are in German (sorry), like these two:

http://fabier.de/biercalcs.html
https://www.maischemalzundmehr.de/index.php?inhaltmitte=toolsspeiserechner

 

[Soulshine2]

I could use the translater on the first one, but still didn't help.
There has to be an easier way to figure how much to use. Or someone who has done it.

 

[Soulshine2]

I found this...

http://www.picobrewery.com/askarchive/krausen.htm

but sounds like I won't have enough ,or wont get a predictable result....looks like priming sugar again anyway.

 

[Vale71]

Just change your definition of "easy" and you're done.

You have to know how much CO2 you need to add to your beer to get to target carbonation. You know how much CO2 is in the beer (temperature dependent), you know your target, just subtract and multiply by batch size.
Now multiply by 2.08 (or whatever the factor is for imperial units. Sorry, metric units in use on my side of the pond) to get how much fermentable extract you need to add to your batch of beer.
If this were table sugar than sugar_addition=extract_needed. But if you want to work with Speise, you need to know how much fermentable extract you bring in with every unit of volume of wort. To do that, subtract real_FG from OG. To do that you need to know OG and apparent attenuation and then compute real attenuation to get the actual FG.
You then divide extract_needed by extraxt_per_unit_volume_Speise to get the amount of Speise needed.
But, you must take into account the fact that Speise has no CO2 and must be carbonated as well, so you need some extra Speise just to carbonate the Speise to the same target level than your beer.

It all boils down to a rather complicated formula...

 

[Soulshine2]

I must be confused ...we add priming sugar ( at the rate of about 1 oz /gallon)at bottling to feed the residual yeasts still present and it gives the finished beer its carbonation in a sealed vessel(i.e, the bottle as it conditions)...I get that.

I'm reading when kraeusening you add 15-20% of the finished beer (in my case would be almost 1 more gallon,which I dont have enough ) with an actively fermenting sample and this does the same thing. To me doesn't make sense. One is sugar , other is more suagr with fully active yeast action.
I was under the impression to add this amount in sterile non-yeasted wort to add the available sugars needed to carbonate.

Am I wrong?

 

[Vale71]

What you want to do is work with "Speise" (i.e. unfermented wort). Kräusening is the addition of fermenting wort, typically in a commercial setting from a subsequent batch of beer. The latter is even more complicated as you need to know how far along the yeast has come already in fermenting the wort.
Rule of thumb instructions such as "add 20%" only work when kegging as you can then release the excess pressure that could be created if your addition was over target. If you want to bottle than you have to be very accurate in your calculations or you could end up with either under-carbonated beer or, even worse, with bottle bombs.
What was the issue with the first calculator? Maybe I can clear it up for you.

 

[Soulshine2]

http://beersmith.com/blog/2010/03/22/krausening-home-brewed-beer/

see , then I found this , so its confusing ...

 

[Vale71]

Hope this does not come across as too harsh, but if you are really very confused by the whole calculations than maybe it's best to keep working with sugar additions. I strongly advise you against operating on those primitive "rule-of-thumb" formulas to avoid ruining your beer or possibly even compromising your own safety.

 

[Soulshine2]

What you want to do is work with "Speise" (i.e. unfermented wort).

What was the issue with the first calculator? Maybe I can clear it up for you.

Yes, thats what I thought kraeusening was....apparently not so.

My issue was that I'm not sure what those numbers mean what after translation. too many blanks with information that ,for my case , means very little.
I know my OG, 1.050
I predict my FG will finish around 1.010 give or take a point or 2...seems logical ,right?
I'll have 5 gallons of fermented wort/beer ,give or take a quart of trub/settlings.
I have only 48 oz of unfermented wort,again at 1.050 SG.
Can you tell me if that will work? I could pour some wort off of other yeast cakes I have in the fridge and come up with another pint ...but they arent even in the same style of beer.
I'm more the seat of the pants brewer ,not overly technical nor a "numbers guy". I hit my gravities with their respective volumes . I like my results, so far.

 

[Soulshine2]

Hope this does not come across as too harsh, but if you are really very confused by the whole calculations than maybe it's best to keep working with sugar additions. I strongly advise you against operating on those primitive "rule-of-thumb" formulas to avoid ruining your beer or possibly even compromising your own safety.

nope, not harsh at all. I appreciate the help ...and the truth .

 

[cloudybrewer]

From what I gather, krausening is adding actively fermenting wort to the beer to carbonate. What you want to do is just add more of the original wort at bottling, which is called speise.

I looked into this for my last beer too. I found some old threads where people gave guidelines for the speise amount. Also, Brewers friend has a calculator called the Gyle and Krausen Priming Calculator. What I found was lots of conflicting info, so I jumped ship and force carbed the keg. I gather that this isn't done much in the homebrewing world.

 

[Soulshine2]

I did find a quick and easy formula about this ...in my handy charlie papazian book.
in short-
(12 x #gallons) / (OG - 1.000)x 1000 = quarts of wort
so with my numbers plugged in , 5 gallons and OG of 1.050 I get 38.4 ounces of unfermented sterile wort added at bottling.
I may just figure out a smaller volume (like a 12 pack)to try it and compare results. That way if something goes wrong, I don't lose the entire batch.

 

[cloudybrewer]

I did find a quick and easy formula about this ...in my handy charlie papazian book.
in short-
(12 x #gallons) / (OG - 1.000)x 1000 = quarts of wort
so with my numbers plugged in , 5 gallons and OG of 1.050 I get 38.4 ounces of unfermented sterile wort added at bottling.
I may just figure out a smaller volume (like a 12 pack)to try it and compare results. That way if something goes wrong, I don't lose the entire batch.

That sounds pretty simple. Hope it works.

 

[cloudybrewer]

The Brewers Friend calc I mentioned before gives the same answer (1.2 qts) for 2.0 volumes of carbonation. I'd definitely try a six or twelve pack and see what happens.