Faster Bottle Carbonation

[mew]

I would like to move my beer to the fridge as soon as possible after brewing, in order to keep it fresh. Bottle carbing can sometimes take months and diminishes the freshness of my beer.

To combat this problem, I am going to top-crop some yeast from fermentation, save it in the fridge, and make a starter out of it on bottling day, attempting to pitch while active.

I'll post back here to show my results. Chime in if you have other ideas.

 

[ChshreCat]

If it's taking months to carbonate, I'd think it's one of two things...

1. You're keeping your beer too cool during carbonation. Warming it up into the 70's should let you carb in a month or less.

2. You're doing high gravity beers which can take longer to carbonate. In that case, the conditioning time is good for them anyway.

 

[RunBikeBrew]

I bottle carb in a water bath with an aquarium heater and small water pump. I get full carbonation in a week if I set the water temp to around 75F (the beer is still a little green to be great, but it's carbed). Actually, tonight I opened the first of an American Amber that has been carbonating for 7 days. The carbonation was fine.

(However, the beer is so-so. It's not aged enough yet and this was my second AG batch. I had very poor efficiency (63%), so the beers a bit thin. I'm getting better, though...)

One other note: make sure the water bath level is below the bottle caps. They will rust.

One other, other note: put in a splash of bleach to keep it from getting stinky.

 

[rod]

when i was trying to speed up bottle carbing i would add 1/2 pack of rehydrated yeast to the bottling bucket.
more yeast = faster carbing:rockin:
more yeast = more sediment in bottle