REAL ALE

[Guzluka]

I quite like warm room temperature ales that have lots of flavour. I read on camra that there is no use of extraneous carbonation. Does this basically mean you dont add sugar to prime, you just let it carbonate naturally? Do you have to add sugar to prime and carbonate?

[RichardG]

I'd have thought you need some sort of secondary fermentation, otherwise your beer would be flat and lifeless. But I guess it's also down to personal taste. Mr Ditch on the kit forum loves his Coopers Stout, but he never adds any additional sugars to the barrel. I like my beers as close to pubs levels of carbonation as I can get, so I keep the sugar levels quite low. Beyond that I'm not really sure what their driving at. After all, commercial bottle conditioned ales have secondary carbonation.

[Jim]

When CAMRA talk about extraneous carbonation, they mean externally applied CO2, i.e. from a gas bottle.

I know that at least some breweries don't add any priming sugars to their cask ales - they rely on the secondary fermentation of residual sugars that are naturally present in the beer.

[Guzluka]

It may be risky not adding anything, maybe injecting the batch with a gas bottle would suffice. Does gas bottle co2 injection provide for a lower level of carbonation than adding sugar? What would be the result of adding a small amout of honey or syrup?

[Invalid Stout]

It may be risky not adding anything, maybe injecting the batch with a gas bottle would suffice. Does gas bottle co2 injection provide for a lower level of carbonation than adding sugar? What would be the result of adding a small amout of honey or syrup?

A lower level of carbonation? Well, it depends how much you add. You can over- or undercarbonate your beer with gas injection just as you can with sugar.

Adding honey or syrup will have the same result as adding sugar: the yeast will eat it and generate CO2. It's all just food as far as the yeast is concerned, and in the quantities required for conditioning it shouldn't affect the taste much, if at all.