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Bottle Conditioned Beer

Homebrewing

The All Grain Brewer   |   Wednesday, February 22 2012

Carbonation drops :  How to let the carbonation happen naturally in the bottle by adding sugar.

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So I have been kegging my beers exclusively since about 2006. I like kegging over bottling on several levels. First I only have to clean one keg, and second I can much more easily adjust carbonation in beer the way I want it.

However, I have recently been doing some bottling after I rack / transfer the beer into the keg. I still have to clean and sanitize the bottles just like I used to, but generally I am only working with a dozen or less so it is not that painful. As I mentioned earlier, I didn’t like bottling because I could never get the correct carbonation levels. A lot of my carbonation level problems revolved around my brewing equipment. My buckets and carboys have no volume indication. Therefore, I would put in the correct amount of corn sugar for five gallons of beer for proper carbonation, but I might actually have 5.2 gallons of beer. This means my final product is under carbonated, and I’m once again not happy with the beer.

So now what have I been doing you ask? Well I have been having good luck with carbonation drops from Coopers, which are nothing but corn sugar pellets. Here is what I do. I transfer beer from the carboy to a keg. I purge all the air out of the keg with CO2, which is always my practice. I then hook up my picnic / cobra tap to the keg. I take my already cleaned and sanitized bottles, and put one carbonator drop in my 12 ounce bottle. The directions on the carbonator drop packaging tell the brewer the quantity of drops needed. By transferring the beer in a 12 ounce bottle I know exactly the volume of beer that I am trying to carbonate. I then push the beer out of the keg with low CO2 pressure, about 5 psi, and into each sanitized bottle holding one carbonator drop. Since the beer is flat, no beer is foaming out of the top of the bottle neck, and I proceed to cap the bottle from there.

This then allows me to still have a keg of my favorite brew, while having some bottles for easy transport to friends' houses, or to ship it to a homebrew competition.

Now it takes at least two weeks in the bottle for proper carbonation to happen, as the fermentation happens within the bottle due to the sugar drop and the residual yeast in the beer. This is known as bottle conditioning. So if you see “bottled conditioned” on a commercial beer label it means the brewer let carbonation happen naturally in the bottle by adding sugar, instead of injecting already carbonated beer directly into the bottle.

I discussed in a previous article I have had problems with fermentation during the winter. Go figure, it happened again, and it was the exact same reason. You think I would learn the first time. After I got done bottling some American Stouts, I had one about four weeks later. When I opened it I knew I was in trouble. There was barely a psssss of carbonation sound. Then when I went to drink it, it tasted nice and sweet. The sugar had dissolved, but the temperatures in my basement were so cool (62 F) that fermentation did not kick-off as expected. Now after I bottle, I set my bottles in a nice warm (not more than 72) area of the house for a least two weeks, so fermentation happens in the bottle, thus the beer gets carbonated.

The All Grain Brewer has Spoken