Bottle conditioning test temp.

[Rose-Ales Brewing]

Hey this may be a newbie question. I've got now 4 beers under my belt. I've got currently a stout bottle conditioning now for 2 weeks. I want to check carbonation and was about to open one up when I thought, Should this be cold or room temp? After looking around I couldn't find an answer.
So I guess my question is when testing a beer for carbonation should I test it cold or room temp? Thanks for the help guys.

 

[jmcnamara]

Put it in the fridge for a few days then try it. The cold will help to put the co2 into suspension in the beer and also drop out some sediment to the bottom
Let us know how it goes!

 

[J A]

Definitely cold. Even if you just chill it down for a few hours, you'll get a sense of how well it's carbed. As jmcnamara says, a few days in the cold temp will make for a better pour but just for a preliminary carb check, I always just slapped one in the fridge or even gave it a quick stint in the freezer to chill well before opening.

 

[Rose-Ales Brewing]

Put it in the fridge for a few days then try it. The cold will help to put the co2 into suspension in the beer and also drop out some sediment to the bottom
Let us know how it goes!

Awesome thanks guys. I stuck one in the fridge last night. Will definitely let you know how it goes!

 

[Rose-Ales Brewing]

Awesome thanks guys. I stuck one in the fridge last night. Will definitely let you know how it goes!

Definitely cold. Even if you just chill it down for a few hours, you'll get a sense of how well it's carbed. As jmcnamara says, a few days in the cold temp will make for a better pour but just for a preliminary carb check, .

So I tried my beer and it did a nice hiss as we poped the cap. But when we poured even being slow and angled it seemed way over-carbonated. Maybe I let them sit too long? I let it for a bit and settle down and it tasted great! So I stuck the rest of em in my garage. It sits around 50°f this time of year.

 

[J A]

Maybe I let them sit too long?

Sitting is all it does once you put the priming sugar in. You put too much priming sugar in it. How much did you use for how much beer?

 

[Rose-Ales Brewing]

Sitting is all it does once you put the priming sugar in. You put too much priming sugar in it. How much did you use for how much beer?

Well it was supposed to be a 5 gal batch. We mashed with maybe 4 gal and had maybe 3.5 after the boil? And we weren't sure if we wanted to top of with water to make it 5 gal or leave it as is so we just left it. And for priming we used maybe 1¼ cups of molasses. Hmmm now that I'm thinking maybe we used too much molasses?

 

[Craigerrr]

Molasses, interesting, never heard of using that for bottle conditioning, but I am pretty green.

There are calculators, including on this site, that will tell you how much sugar/DME/molasses/whatever, to add to get the carbonation desired. If they are overcarbed, it would be from adding too much sugar. The yeast eat the sugar and turn it into CO2.

Hope this helps

 

[J A]

If you used 1 1/4 cup of molasses to prime around 3 gallons of beer you probably have about 4 times as much priming sugar as you should have. An ounce of cane sugar per gallon is a decent rule of thumb. You have about a pound of molasses and that translates to around 3/4 lb of sugar. Use the priming calculator next time.
Maybe if you can keep it cold they won't explode but I don't see how you're going to pour a glass that's not all foam.

 

[Nosybear]

Molasses, interesting, never heard of using that for bottle conditioning, but I am pretty green.

There are calculators, including on this site, that will tell you how much sugar/DME/molasses/whatever, to add to get the carbonation desired. If they are overcarbed, it would be from adding too much sugar. The yeast eat the sugar and turn it into CO2.

Hope this helps

Anything with sugar can be used to prime. Problem with molasses is it's unpredictable. You can't really tell how much sugar you're adding to the bottles. Better approach would be to use the molasses in the last 5 minutes of the boil or as a fermentor addition, then use a more "standardized" sugar like corn sugar or cane sugar to prime.