Carbonation just not right (bottling).

[selz13]

Hi All,

Have been getting stuck into my second brew finally as it definetly needed the 4 weeks, worth the wait as they are bloody good lol; however, I am finding the 750 Pet bottles are low on carbonation and found that with my first brew as well. This brew I botteled some stubbys and they were perfect it just seems to be the Coopers plastic Pet bottles that are not. This time when bottling I made sure that all carbonation drops were whole and not broken ones and so forth, yet I think this time it's worse than my first brew even though I really made sure was all consistant with both drops. 

Having this problem twice in a row should I change to manual sugar measuring for carbonation instead of drops? Any help, advice and/or experiances would be awesome and thanks in advance

[iBooz2]

 

28 minutes ago, selz13 said:

This brew I botteled some stubbys and they were perfect it just seems to be the Coopers plastic Pet bottles that are not.

Exactly the finding of my many brews.  The elasticity of the plastic PET bottles and Coopers recipe instructions are the root cause.  There is a method I think all of us have now adopted called the Muzzy method @MUZZY which is to use 1 x Coopers carbonation drop plus 1 x cube of white sugar.  Having also used this method on several batches it is definitely an improvement but in my view still needs a bit more say 2 x CSR white sugar cubes per 740 ml PET bottle.  You can also use a sugar measuring jigger available at home brew stores or Big-W and normal white table sugar but I would be doing a jigger and also a half.  In other words prime the 740 ml PET bottle with the appropriate size jigger for 740 ml but also give it an extra stubby size jigger as well.

It is very important not to use this method for 740 ml glass bottles and also very important to ensure you fermentation is in fact finished by making sure your final gravity has been reached via a hydrometer and you get the same reading over minimum of two consecutive days.  Stick with the 1 x carbonation drop for your glass stubbies.

Of note too is that most brewers also cold crash their batches for a few days to help clear them up and hence maybe not as much yeast in suspension in the beer that is bottled after this process and hence the need for just that little bit more sugar.

My advice is to do most of the next batch using the "muzzy method" all but say 6 bottles use 2 x CSR white sugar cubes and label these bottles with masking tape so you can compare them yourself at drinking time.  Once you find the sugar method that works for you stick to that routine,

If you do a search on either carbonation or flat beer or dud PET bottles or muzzy method you will find past threads were we discussed these issues.

I have a table of sugar measures and weights here somewhere and when I find it will post it up.

Cheers - AL

[lickedthestamp]

I think the level of carbonation can be a bit of personal preference, but I have been using the 2 carbonation drops for my brews as specified by the Cooper's recipes and have been happy with the level of carbonation so far.

You do need to ensure with the PET bottles that the caps are on tight. About 4 days or so after bottling I usually re-tighten the caps. I had one brew where I had some inconsistency between the bottles, but this was the one I forgot to re-tighten the caps on after bottling so have put it down to that.

I have only recently cold crashed my first brew and am yet to taste the results of that, so perhaps I will need to go to the Muzzy method if that affects the level of carbonation the drops alone provide.

 

Edited January 20, 2021 by lickedthestamp

[Malter White]

They named a grandstand at Adelaide Oval and the road to the airport after Donald Bradman. I am humbled to have a beer carbonation process named after me. Hahaha.

@selz13 As LIckedthestamp pointed out above, carbonation is a personal preference and it sounds like you like a bit more fizz. To give you an idea of the difference between Coopers Carbonation Drops and CSR Sugar Cubes, the CCD are approx 3g each and the CSR cubes are 4.5g each. Using one of each increases your priming sugar by 25%. It seems to work fine in PET bottles. I have never used glass bottles so can't recommend the same dosage in glass. There is a very real risk of glass exploding, so if you try it PLEASE BE CAREFUL. I haven't had too many of them but the worst thing that can happen with PET is a soft bottle/flat beer.

[Classic Brewing Co]

I have also experienced a few dud PET bottles, but overall pretty good results, I have even weighed carb drops to ensure exactness, these are Coopers drops,

the group on the left weigh 3g the right 4g so there is a variation, this seems like a drastic measure ( pardon the pun ) but white sugar users measure so I would have thought it better to have the same amount in each bottle.

I have used Coopers Long Necks & Grolsch Swing tops with excellent results & even Corona Stubbies. I saw a you tube video with one guy squeezing the PET bottles before filling, but not sure about that.

Cheers

Phil

[Malter White]

@CLASSIC Squeezing BEFORE filling? I saw a video by the fella from Cellar Dwellers, Gash Slug I think is his moniker, where he squeezes AFTER filling and prior to putting the lid on to eliminate as much oxygen as possible. I tried this method once but decided cleaning the messes I made from careless squeezes wasn't worth the arguable benefit squeezing provided. I find filling the bottles with the wand and then adding the carb drops pushes the beer fairly close to the top of the bottle. Any oxygen in there would be negligible anyway, in my opinion.

[Classic Brewing Co]

I agree MUZZY there are a few 'weirdos' on You Tube carrying on a bit although a lot of good stuff also.

Some of the American dudes can go on a bit ! 

[Lab Cat]

6 hours ago, selz13 said:

Having this problem twice in a row should I change to manual sugar measuring for carbonation instead of drops? Any help, advice and/or experiances would be awesome and thanks in advance

Yes. The carb drop should work, but they don't. I changed to sugar and PETs were fine after that. Allows you to adjust your preferred level of fizz as well. A bottle scoop for 740ml bottles was plenty of fizz for me.

[lickedthestamp]

Ok well after tasting my first cold crashed brew it looks like I will need to try the Muzzy Method^TM of carbonation, as this one is definitely a bit flatter compared to my previous brews. So have just bottled my Dr Smurto's Golden Ale and dropped in 1 carbonation drop with 1 CSR sugar cube per bottle - hopefully it brings back the fizz a bit 

As an aside, it's almost as though those CSR cubes are made to fit in the Coopers PET bottles - they literally *just* fit through the top 

Edited January 29, 2021 by lickedthestamp

[stquinto]

I use quite heavy glass bottles (old Duvel or Chimay ones) and sugar dissolved in hot water in the beer. I tried carbo drops put in after the beer had been bottled and they fizzed over. I found an American site that recommended putting the dissolved sugar in a just-sanitized FV, then draininging in the beer though a tube from the FV used to make the beer. That wasy you don't have to stir it up and potentially introduce oxygen. It works pretty nicely for me.

As for bottle grenades, I had a few over the years and I think the beer's FG was probably too high, and also the bottles weren't really meant to be reused. Often the Belgian beer ones have a deposit back on them so they get sent back to the brewers and reused.

I should probably go for kegging but as it's only me in the house drinking it I'm worried it will go off. But it would make life easier, that's for sure !

[ozdevil]

Why not bulk Prime this eliminates  some carbed ok but others over carb or undercarbed

rather simple method  in which you can head to brewers friend website and input a few  figures and it will calculate
how much sugar you need to carbonate the brew to your desired co2

the method is  simple and easy

1 boil 200mls of water with your priming sugar (lets just say 120grams of sugar), making sure that allsugar is dissolved)
then let it cool down 

2 pour your  priming solution into your bottling bucket or spare fermenter

3 rack your wort  without  disturbing your wort to much into bottling bucket or spare fermenter

4 gently stir  the wort so all the Priming solution is mixed through the wort

5 bottle your wort

6 job done

By doing this each bottle gets the same amount of priming sugar and will avoid the bottle bombs as well (unless you go stupid with your priming sugar)
and will  be the same carbonation for your every bottle in your batch

Also with Bottling with carb drops you may find you have missed a bottle with the carb drops  or you may second guess yaself wondering  did i put carb drop in that one

bulk priming  takes this all away


 

[ozdevil]

7 hours ago, stquinto said:

I should probably go for kegging but as it's only me in the house drinking it I'm worried it will go off. But it would make life easier, that's for sure !

kegging is my only method at the moment  and i also bottle from the keg  as bottling from the keg is much easier then waiting for  bottles to create carbonation
as  bottling from keg  you can bottle and drink straight away  which is very handy  if ya wanna take a 6 pack to a mates place  or  where ever  

The only time now that i would bottle with Priming sugar is a brew that i want to store for months to mature...

Kegging is gold   alot easier  in many ways

[Tone boy]

Hey @Gavino90 Gav, check out this thread for some information on bottling and carbonation. 

[ozdevil]

Just a Video i will Share  which is from Gash (homebrew network) alot of you would have seen some of his videos or been on his facebook groups

This is on Bulk Priming and will show you how to go about it
 

 

[Classic Brewing Co]

I have seen his videos, he seems straight to the point & does not complicate anything. 

[BreweyMcHops]

Bulk prime once, laugh,  think why the hell did I ever muck around with coopers drops or shugar cubes , and never go back. 

About 140g white ordinary sugar,dissolved in 500ml warm water  , and get THAT IN YA fermenter 20 mins before bottling. Thats it,done, end of story. 

[selz13]

Awesome information everyone and I think the move to bulk priming will be the go. As I want to be able to just bottle with ease and swap between stubbies and PET bottles as needed.

Huge amount of info though everyone and thanks heaps. I do like the idea of kegging thats for sure but the expense (yes i know buy once, cry once) and the fact that I actually don't drink that much at all and I am the only in the houshold at the moment (though that will change in a few years once the boys are older I am sure lol).

Thanks again everyone for the help and have to say best community here thats for sure, CHEERS!

Edited January 30, 2021 by selz13

[Malter White]

Time for a little self-indulgence. I use the app, Brewtracker, to record all my brews. In bottling notes I'd normally type in "Primed with 1 CSR sugar cube and 1 Coopers carbonation drop".

Not anymore!

[Tricky Micky]

I bulk prime my beer in the primary FV - it's easy as. I would not go back to sugar drops, cubes, or anything else it's gold at least for me. I like my fizz and because I'm using the Plazzie PET 740ml bottles I don't have to worry as much about the CO2 levels as I would if the beer were stored in glass. I'm adding anywhere between 8mgs and 10 mgs of sugar per liter. Approx 3.6 -3.8 Vol CO2.

Thanks to @Lab Cat for the heads up.  Love it!

Edited April 3, 2021 by Mickep

[lickedthestamp]

On 1/29/2021 at 10:53 PM, lickedthestamp said:

Ok well after tasting my first cold crashed brew it looks like I will need to try the Muzzy Method^TM of carbonation, as this one is definitely a bit flatter compared to my previous brews. So have just bottled my Dr Smurto's Golden Ale and dropped in 1 carbonation drop with 1 CSR sugar cube per bottle - hopefully it brings back the fizz a bit 

As an aside, it's almost as though those CSR cubes are made to fit in the Coopers PET bottles - they literally *just* fit through the top 

Unfortunately this first cold-crashed brew (with 2 carb drops) I did that was a bit flat hasn't come good with time, despite being in the bottle for over 3 months. I had about half a dozen bottles left so have decided to experiment with them by adding another carb drop to 3 of them, and in the remaining 3 I have added in half a CSR sugar cube - so will see what that brings. 

Had to be quick when adding them to the bottle though - despite these beers being pretty flat in the glass, they don't half foam up quick when you drop another carb drop/sugar into them!

The Golden Ales I did using the Muzzy Method^TM though have been great

[BlackSands]

It's perhaps worth mentioning that the drops are glucose (aka dextrose) while table sugar/cubes are a disaccharide - sucrose (glucose and fructose).   What this means in practical terms is that you will actually need a little more glucose/dextrose to achieve the same levels of CO² compared to using table sugar.  So, if you're say priming with 140g sugar then that's going to be around 150g if using dextrose.

[Aussiekraut]

2 hours ago, Mickep said:

I bulk prime my beer in the primary FV - it's easy as. I would not go back to sugar drops, cubes, or anything else it's gold at least for me. I like my fizz and because I'm using the Plazzie PET 740ml bottles I don't have to worry as much about the CO2 levels as I would if the beer were stored in glass. I'm adding anywhere between 8mgs and 10 mgs of sugar per liter. Approx 3.6 -3.8 Vol CO2.

Thanks to @Lab Cat for the heads up.  Love it!

I agree, no need for a secondary FV. 

[BlackSands]

2 hours ago, Aussiekraut said:

I agree, no need for a secondary FV. 

I'll give this a tentative nod of agreement, though I am still experiencing a little variation in carbonation levels across the batch using this 'priming the primary' method.  I add my gently-stirred, hot dissolved sugar solution to a CC'd brew and leave it for an hour to disperse.  I wonder if some thermal layering is occurring which might account for the variation and therefore perhaps I need to let it sit for longer - maybe 90 minutes?   

Edited April 3, 2021 by BlackSands

[Tricky Micky]

19 hours ago, BlackSands said:

I'll give this a tentative nod of agreement, though I am still experiencing a little variation in carbonation levels across the batch using this 'priming the primary' method.  I add my gently-stirred, hot dissolved sugar solution to a CC'd brew and leave it for an hour to disperse.  I wonder if some thermal layering is occurring which might account for the variation and therefore perhaps I need to let it sit for longer - maybe 90 minutes?   

BS, I was having the same issue some time back. A little variation here and there with the carbonation between the bottles.  I was initially allowing about an hour for the sugar mix to sit in the FV but somebody here possibly @Aussiekraut (apologies if it was somebody else) tipped me off to allow a longer period for the mix to properly disperse in with the wort. I now allow about 2 hours and I've def noticed the difference. My bottles are now all evenly carbed. It seems to have done the trick.

[BlackSands]

5 minutes ago, Mickep said:

...allow a longer period for the mix to properly disperse in with the wort. I now allow about 2 hours and I've def noticed the difference. My bottles are now all evenly carbed. It seems to have done the trick.

Ahh... good to know!