Priming a low alcohol beer

[ecmik]

Hi!
I've searched for an answer, but can't seem to find it.. When I'm using BF:s priming calculator, the carbonation usually turns out great! But for my latest brew things are a little bit different. I brewed a low alcohol ale with an OG of 1.027 and an FG of about 1.013. I fermented 8 L (2.11 gallon) with about 2 grams of dry yeast. The taste was actually great after 7 days fermentation, so I don't wanna mess things upp right now..

My question is: When I calculate the carbonation, do you think I can use a priming calculator in the same way as when I have an OG of 1.060? Is there enough yeast left in the wort to convert the amount of priming sugar I'm suppose to add, or do I have to add more yeast before priming do you think?

I would be really happy if someone would help me get things straight here..

Thanks!

 

[The Brew Mentor]

ecmik

There are plenty of healthy cells left in your beer.
Go ahead and prime it as you normally would.
For standard carbonation levels, I'd use 1 ounce of Dextrose per gallon of beer.

The only concern would be that the beer is terminal. Check your gravity over 3 days to make sure it's the same prior to bottling.

Good luck
Brian

 

[ecmik]

Very good! Thanks! At these low alcohol level beers, I heard that the alcohol volume rises about 0.2-0.3% per bottle when priming with sugar. Have you heard anything about that?

 

[The Brew Mentor]

Quickly doing the math, the abv should go up less than .4%
Brian

 

[ecmik]

Quickly doing the math, the abv should go up less than .4%
Brian

Interesting! May I ask how you calculate it?

 

[The Brew Mentor]

A pound of sugar has 47 gravity points per gallon.
Divide that by 16 for the 1 ounce per gallon you prime with and you get 2.94 points.
I plugged a difference of 3 gravity points into the ABV calculator and it came out .39%
That should be right.
Brian

 

[ecmik]

A pound of sugar has 47 gravity points per gallon.
Divide that by 16 for the 1 ounce per gallon you prime with and you get 2.94 points.
I plugged a difference of 3 gravity points into the ABV calculator and it came out .39%
That should be right.
Brian

Perfect! This is awesome info.

Does the priming sugar have this effect on all beers? Let's say a 6.5 % beer, is it a 6.9 % beer after priming? Because this is quite a significant difference I think..

Thank you very much!

 

[The Brew Mentor]

The ABV goes up .39% and there will be no change in the sweetness.
Brian

 

[ecmik]

The ABV goes up .39% and there will be no change in the sweetness.
Brian

I changed the question last minute, I guess you answered it before i edited it.. Again, does the priming sugar have this effect on all beers? Let's say a 6.5 % beer, is it a 6.9 % beer after priming? Because this is quite a significant difference I think..

 

[The Brew Mentor]

That would be a safe assumption

 

[ecmik]

I must say I'm pretty surprised.. Even if the difference isn't THAT big (4.5 to about 4.9%), it's still an ABV increase with about 8-10%! I wonder why software like Beersmith doesn't take this to account when calculating the final ABV? For me it seems easy just to add a calculation box for this in the carbonation-page in Beersmith.. Then it would be far more easy to tell almost exactly the correct amount of alcohol.

 

[Nosybear]

Assuming the conversion is linear with gravity (sorry for the geek-speak), the effect would be the same for a higher gravity beer. No empirical evidence to confirm and I suspect as the gravity gets higher, the carbonation would get lower due to the more hostile environment for the yeast. The chemistry is the same - you're converting the same number of moles of sugar to alcohol and carbon dioxide in both cases, yielding the same amount of both. Practically? From my experience, the difference is negligible at our scale.

 

[The Brew Mentor]

Last I checked, we're making beer and alcohol is good! :mrgreen: haha
Brian

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

simple solution, keg and use C02 to carb