NB priming calc question.

[skuhn2004]

I am sure most are familiar but I will repost to be complete.

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

I am working with a honey brown ale that I brewed with US-05. It's the first beer I had a ferm chamber I could cold crash with and set it at 34F@48 hours.

The calc says I should have 2.4 vols and at 5 gal I should use 66.46G corn sugar. I rounded up and used 67G. I did the usual boil 12oz water with corn sugar, poured into bottling bucket and racked on top of that. Typical bottling session. Nothin' fancy.

It has been stored at 70-75F for exactly 21 days. The AC went out so it even had a day or two in the 80's.

It's delicious but really flat. For what carbonation it does have the lacing perfect. But still flat. My bitter that is supposed to be low carbonation has more than this beer.

I searched the threads here and found this comment.

"And remember that "temperature" on the calculator means the highest temp your brew has reached during the fermentation process, not the temp you expect to carb at."

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/best-online-priming-sugar-calculator-293305/#post3647097

Is this correct? It does not sound right. If it's true I really needed 122G of corn sugar.

Should I just RDWHAHB?

 

[elimn8u]

My guess is you didn't use nearly enough priming sugar. I would have left the "current temperature" of the beer at room temperature. Maybe the carbonation will improve in another three weeks.

 

[gromitdj]

Using the temperature of the beer to adjust the amount of priming sugar takes into account the CO2 that is already dissolved in the beer. If the beer's temp was raised towards the end of fermentation in order to reach final gravity (or for any other reason), the CO2 would be released at the higher temperature. It doesn't magically create more CO2 when you then cold crash the beer. That is why the highest temperature it rested at during fermentation should be used.

I hope that helps.

 

[peterj]

Using the temperature of the beer to adjust the amount of priming sugar takes into account the CO2 that is already dissolved in the beer. If the beer's temp was raised towards the end of fermentation in order to reach final gravity (or for any other reason), the CO2 would be released at the higher temperature. It doesn't magically create more CO2 when you then cold crash the beer. That is why the highest temperature it rested at during fermentation should be used.

I hope that helps.

+1. This is correct. You absolutely use the highest temperature. Sounds like you only used about half the priming sugar you should have. You'll probably need to add more if you want them to carbonate to the level you had in mind.

 

[skuhn2004]

I need to revive this one. I realize i screwed up and only used half the amount of corn sugar that I should have.

I am trying to fix the problem with Brewers Best conditioning tablets. I am using 22 OZ bottles so I am going to add 4 tablets per bottle.

But I can't! By the time the second one hits there is enough carbonation to turn it into a gusher.

Please help!!!

Will chilling the bottles before I try to add the tabs help?

I have 2 batches I made the same mistake on. Please tell me this is fixable.

Original post.

 

[peterj]

Yeah chilling them down first will help keep the CO2 in solution for longer. I think adding those tablets to the bottles is your best option, so just see if you can do it really fast when they are really cold I guess. That sucks, I hope you can fix it!