How much do you carbonate your Weizen?

[jat147]

Howdy,

I've pretty much cracked my Weizen as far as flavour goes, but am finding it hard to get the carbonation level right when bottling. My andriod app says the correct level is between 3.6 - 4.5 volumes of CO2, but when I tried 4.0 vols the result was impossible to open without spilling most of the contents. Last time I tried 3.0 volumes CO2 and it seemed fine at first, but after 4 weeks in the bottle, they're now too fizzy again, and opening them is hard to do.
Anyone know what the correct level would be for commercial examples such as Erdinger, Paulaner, Franziskaner etc? My US Pales get 2.4vols which doesn't seem enough for a Weizen when I drink them, even though they are always calm enough to open & pour?
Many thanks.

 

[Copbrew133]

I always shoot for around 3- 3.5 vols. just my preference. Make sure you're fully attenuated to where you're supposed to be. Sometimes if the beer still has an abundance of fermentables left and you add more sugars for bottle carbing and then add in the inevitable movement during transfers and bottling and yeast getting back into solution you can end up overcarbed. Was that a runon sentence....oh well. You may be already doing all this, but just a thought.

 

[NA_Wreckdiver]

I always shoot for around 3- 3.5 vols. just my preference.

Same here. We used 7oz of corn sugar to bottle a 5 gal batch into 750ml bottles. I think it turned out perfect.

 

[jat147]

Thanks for the input.
I bottled at 1.009 which was 81% attenuation, so I think that was fully attenuated with WLP300 - a good point though.
Thanks for the photo, it certainly looks pretty perfect. From my calcs 7oz is about 3.4 vols of CO2, which is still more than my recent effort at only 3 vols?

 

[ReverseApacheMaster]

I carb to 4oz. You shouldn't have foaming bottles unless primary fermentation was not complete (or the less likely infection).