Hear in calgary I sit somewhere around 4000ft and I would assume that the different pressure hear would have an effect on carbonation. Does anyone have any knowledge or experience with altitude effecting bottling conditions?
Does altitude effect required priming sugar?
- Thread starter clayroc
- Start date
Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:
a10t2
Well-Known Member
Technically, yes, but you're low enough that it won't be a noticeable effect. Hell, *I'm* low enough that it's barely noticeable.
Maybe I'm missing something, but why would the pressure in a closed vessel be any different at say 20,000 feet than at sea level? I could see it affecting the gauge on a kegging setup, but priming sugar too?
FromZwolle
I don't want to be cremated, I want to be malted.
I can't recall where I read it from, but someone had bought some beer in a high altitude ski village that lost all carbonation when they brought it home. I don't know if you would need to alter your priming sugar to get the same levels as those lower than you, but I'd probably do a trial run with your beer before sending it off to any competitions that were held in low (relative to you) elevation cities.
a10t2
Well-Known Member
The absolute pressure won't change, but the gauge pressure affects "the hiss", the amount of head formed, head retention and lacing, aroma, and all the other little things that contribute to the overall experience of a particular beer. It's a really minor effect for most people, but when packaging at 9300 ft we over-carbonate slightly so that the beer will be "normal" at lower elevations.
FromZwolle: If the beer was truly flat, the brewery can't blame that on altitude. We're the highest packaging brewery in the US and the effect is still only 0.3 vol.
I understand gauge pressure, but he's asking about natural carbonation. Isn't the yeast producing the same mass of CO2 (carbonation) regardless of the elevation. I would think adjusting the priming sugar would only be necessary due to the quicker release of CO2 at the lower atmospheric pressure, and the perceived carbonation level. Is there a formula to compensate for this elevation effect?
a10t2
Well-Known Member
I don't know of any, but what I do is just assume that small changes in carbonation (less than about 0.2 vol) aren't really distinguishable. That actually gives you a really wide range of elevation. I figure that the "average" craft beer is carbonated to about 2.4 vol CO2 and drunk near sea level, where the atmospheric pressure is the equivalent of about 0.65 vol CO2. So a differential of ~1.85 vol gives that "standard" opening/pouring experience. To provide that same experience at different elevations, you just need to compensate for the reduced atmospheric pressure, which a carbonation calculator won't take into account.
For example, fermenting an ale at 68°F, a calculator will tell me there's 0.9 vol residual CO2 in solution. But since I'm at 9300 ft (P = 0.72 atm) it's actually 0.65 vol. (Assuming the partial pressure of CO2 scales with atmospheric pressure, i.e. ideal gases, which I think is close enough for our purposes.) If I'm going to package a beer that's intended to be opened at sea level, I need to make up those ~0.25 vol when carbonating. Since almost all of my beer is drunk around 4,000-6,000 ft, I over-carbonate by about 0.1 vol. My hypothesis here is that no one can detect a difference in carbonation that small, but the difference in the other, audible and visual factors is definitely noticeable.
I dont understand all the fancy science around carbonation, but i did notice the beer at 10,000ft was more carbonated than normal.
I drank some bottled beers from Breckinridge brewery at my house at sea level, but when i was there at 10,000ft at their brewery the beers were carbonated more than what i remembered.
I drank some bottled beers from Breckinridge brewery at my house at sea level, but when i was there at 10,000ft at their brewery the beers were carbonated more than what i remembered.
