Beer Forum

I'm a kegger...have been since I started so bottling is a new thing for me.

Getting ready to bottle a 5 gal batch of IPA and trying to figure out how much priming sugar to mix up. I was pointed to a link on tastybrew.com to calculate but one of the variables is temperature.

I cold crashed this beer. So it's sitting at 35 degrees and according to the calculator, there's a significant difference in the amount of sugar used based on room temp brew and 35 degree brew (almost a 4x difference).

Just don't want to screw up with first IPA in bottles, so I'd appreciate some guidance on which number to use.

Thanks,

Temperature does not have to do with the temp at bottling time, but the storage temp that it is going to be held at. So unless you are going to be placing the bottles back into the fridge, get a temp reading of the room you are oing to store at and use that temp in the calculator.

CRBrewHound wrote:Temperature does not have to do with the temp at bottling time, but the storage temp that it is going to be held at. So unless you are going to be placing the bottles back into the fridge, get a temp reading of the room you are oing to store at and use that temp in the calculator.

This makes sense.
Thanks!

As I understand it (as cited in Brewing Classic Styles), using the nomograph for bottling, the temperature is the temperature of the beer at the time you are bottling. Which makes sense as different amounts of residual carbon dioxide will remain in solution depending on the temperature of the beer. My tip for you is to let the beer warm up first to room temperature before adding your priming sugar and racking to your bottling bucket. This well aid the yeast in eating up the added priming sugar and help them to carbonate your beer faster and more successfully.

brewinhard wrote:As I understand it (as cited in Brewing Classic Styles), using the nomograph for bottling, the temperature is the temperature of the beer at the time you are bottling. Which makes sense as different amounts of residual carbon dioxide will remain in solution depending on the temperature of the beer. My tip for you is to let the beer warm up first to room temperature before adding your priming sugar and racking to your bottling bucket. This well aid the yeast in eating up the added priming sugar and help them to carbonate your beer faster and more successfully.

And if you think about it, it should really be the warmest temp your beer reached after fermentation. Because if you ferment at 50°F, a certain amount of CO2 will be dissolved. If you then raise the temp to 65°F (say for a diacetyl rest), the amount of CO2 your beer can have in solution is lower, so some will come out of solution and be lost. If you bottle at 55°F, more CO2 isn't being produced, so it will not have any more in solution than when it was at 65°.

Although, after thinking more, this assumes that the beer is fully saturated at the end of fermentation, which it probably isn't...

mthhurley wrote:

CRBrewHound wrote:Temperature does not have to do with the temp at bottling time, but the storage temp that it is going to be held at. So unless you are going to be placing the bottles back into the fridge, get a temp reading of the room you are oing to store at and use that temp in the calculator.

This makes sense.
Thanks!

I'm in CRBrewHound's camp. Two things I am thinking about. People who are keggers sometimes bottle their carbonated beer from keg to bottle at very low pressure and at very cold keg and bottle temps. A method to consider. I haven't tried it myself. If you are bottling from a bucket there is no reason not to let beer warm up, the priming sugar (prepared into a solution) should mix into the beer better and the beer needs to be at fermentation temps to ferment the priming sugar when it is bottled. I think the volume of CO2 you want to shoot for is based on the final cold storage temp NOT the warmer temp you store at to produce the CO2.
Let us know how it turns out.
-CH