Carbonation Issue

[Addled Jim]

I bottled a Spring Ale 2 weeks ago now. It had fermented at 19 deg for 14 days then I crashed chilled at 5 deg for 5 or 6 days. Prior to bottling I removed the FV from the fridge and left it on top to come up to room temperature ( probably around 19 or 20 deg. in this room) for a day. On bottling day I syphoned into the bottling bucket for bulk priming
My concern is that secondary fermentation hasn't really carbonated the beer so far as much as I'd have though/liked after 2 weeks when I tried a bottle at the weekend. The questions is would crash chilling have dropped out the majority of the yeast thus leaving insufficient for secondary fermentation? Also I only used 40g of sugar as I was trying to keep carbonation at a minimum; was this taking things to far?

[rossi74]

I usually crash cool to 2c for 2-3 days then bottle cold and have never had any problem with carbonation. Was the 40g for 23l batch? If so sounds like pretty low carbonation.

[Addled Jim]

yeah it was for 23lt

[Addled Jim]

what would be the least amount to get away with though, my last bottled batch were volcanic with 60g's?

[Belter]

Too little sugar. You don't need to warm back up to bottle that is unnecessary.

There is software out their to work out what volumes of co2 you'll get per how ever many grams of sugar

[Belter]

I use Beersmith and Beer alchemy

[Martin G]

Should be enough for a low level of carbonation, guess it depends how you like it. Two weeks doesn't sound like a massive amount of time in the bottles. I have found that chilling the beer can really knock the life out of it, but I suppose that is the point!!

Edit - Wouldn't have contradicted Belter if I saw that first, I used to use about 40g, but thinking about it there was probably still a little left in the beer as well.

[Addled Jim]

Maybe it will continue to carbonating? The bottles are sitting in the kitchen and I certainly wouldn't say its a warm place most of the -time perhaps I'm too impatient taking an early slurp? Being new to bottling I wanted to avoid the excessive fizz from my last batch - I have another brew to bottle on Sunday so don't want to make another mistake

[Matt12398]

I use somewhere around the 80 g mark for an ale and it's generally quite spritzy after a week so I don't think it's because it's too soon. If you had volcanoes at 60 g then I think your fermentation probably hadn't finished.

[Addled Jim]

Well the last lot I bottled was a Wherry kit, it was before I sorted my brewfridge, so it sat in a trug with an aquarium heater - it was in the FV for 3 weeks so I'm pretty certain it had finished - maybe I used 80g for that one, it was a long time ago and I didn't make a note - the carbonation was more akin to a larger though!
I'm bottling an Adnams Explorer clone so will be drinking this slightly chilled which should help to contain the fizz somewhat - will be upping the sugar for sure but just paranoid of overdoing it

[Belter]

I'd get a brewing app for your phone for about a fiver and do a calculation on it

[Addled Jim]

I'll maybe look into it, I did find this whilst Googling, a chart to calculate sugar required, I'm going to print one off at work tomorrow too

http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter11-4.html

[Hanglow]

I use this

http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipa ... ation.html

Typically I use between 60g and 130g per 20l depending on what I'm bottling. lower end for british beers, middle for american and higher up for belgian/wheat

I'm not much of a fan of lower carbonation in bottles, even though I prefer cask beer and their level of carb, for bottles I just prefer them a bit more - not too sure why

You can whisk them with a fork or use a syringe to get a nice creamy head and knock out some of the carbonation

[Addled Jim]

I had to pour smoothly into a 1ltr jug the pour back and forth from jug to glass causing huge foam ups, this left it more like a draft pint
I looked at that link, trouble is I haven't a clue what to put into the Co2 box: what I'm aiming for

[Belter]

There is a really good carbonation chart online which compares co2 bobolinks to types of beer.

I'll try and find it later. I think it's on kegerators .com