Everything YOU NEED TO KNOW About Carbonating Your Beer | 4 Ways to Carbonate Beer | MoreBeer!

hey Vito what are you doing well the Northern California homebrews festival is in less than 48 hours and I have to carve that dortmundry that we brewed so we can serve it well probably a good time to have a discussion on carbonation let's do it [Music] I think it's a perfect time to have a discussion on carbonation and we've been teaching it for over 25 years now and there's a good way of carbonating in a bad way of carbonating none of it's right none of it's wrong but first let's talk about the science of carbonation veto what is carbonation so yeah we with carbonated beer we have a liquid which is beer and a gas which is CO2 we're trying to put that CO2 into you've probably heard in solution so we want CO2 in solution depending on your beer style you're going to have different carbonation levels and it it's measured in bar so you know average finished beers anywhere between 2.2 to 2.6 some Styles like Lambic and wheat beers are up around three bar and that's the measurement of CO2 in solution CO2 goes in a solution at a lower temperature so that the lower the temperature and there's there's charts that show you all this of how much you know PSI and what temperature or equals what bar or carbonation level of uh of beer we'll link to a carbonation chart in the comments below yeah we also have a calculator online too so you could select your beer Style say what the temperature your beer is and hit go and it'll tell you what to set your PSI gauge to and that's good too because different beers you know different finished gravities are affected by that gravity how much sugar is left in there to how much CO2 you're going to need to put on there yep so let's go through I I say there's four different ways to carbonate your beer is what I've always told people and we'll start with the highest risk first and that to me is put your regulator up to 25 28 PSI cold and check it every six to eight hours and then as you feel it's getting more and more carbonated check it more frequently I've had beers carbonate in 12 hours cold and sometimes 24 hours cold but if you need it fast that's one way of doing it next is what Vito was just doing is kind of the same you're cranking up that PSI but then you're rolling it Vita why did you have it on its side so I had it on its side because I get more surface area so that that gas you know is able to have a larger surface area and then the rolling of you know exposes more liquid as I'm rolling it so that that pressure could make its way into solution yes it you know as you're churning it you're introducing more CO2 to the liquid I do it a little differently or did a little differently I use my wife's exercise ball and I never like liked it to be on its side I didn't want beer to come out my CO2 lines they didn't have great inline check valves back then so I bounced it straight up and down on an exercise ball but same concept you're agitating it some people will hit it with 20 psi and take the CO2 off and shake it until and then put it on again there's just different ways but essentially you're just you know upping your game by getting it more into solution do you remember the carb Squatch talking about agitating yes yeah we used to sell a product that would rubber band to your product and just vibrate and it did it did help allow that CO2 to absorb faster so the Third Way is using a carb Stone Vito tell them how you do it in a brewery so yeah at the brewery we use the carb Stone uh you know we've got massive tanks so the first thing you need to do is call find out what they call the watering level so you put your carb Stone depending on you know we add I think it was like a 12 inch carb Stone in a bucket and turn up the PSI to find out what point bubbles start to come out so you know now you've got a baseline then you also take the height of your tanks because every foot of liquid the water column adds pressure to it so if I want to put it at you know say 20 psi and I have my watering levels at you know a half a PSI and then I've got x amount of feet so anyways long story short I'd set that gauge to to hit that that rate so you just turn on the carb Stone generally between you know depending on the gravity of the beer what I'm trying to do I could carbonate a beer in three hours three to four hours and that would be done in a uni tank or a bright tank so as a home Brewer especially in your keg that would be more complicated um we have done it where we've dropped it in on the gas line and then we also sell blickman's product that you know you're recirculating through a stone called the quick carbonator so that's another way you can do it and the nice thing about it is you can kind of more dial in what pressure you're going to get the first two we're kind of like you got to be tasting it making sure you're getting close to it but um you maybe can't pinpoint and make it perfectly repeatable every time let's talk about perfectly repeatable every time as a home Brewer though and that's the fourth way and it's the way I always recommend you carbonate your beer if you don't need it in 48 hours hopefully not often let's say you need it in a week that's the perfect amount of time because you go to that carb chart and let's say you are at 41 degrees and it says you put on 14 PSI you put it on there and leave it STP standard temperature and pressure you just leave it there for one week make sure your regulator is holding strong make sure you're not having a gas leak things like that but you'll hit your saturation Point probably in less than a week probably in five days or so but what's also awesome about a week is cold aging a beer for seven days trying not to draw too much yeah you might get a little sample here or there that's the great part about a Kegerator but you almost get perfectly carbonated beer every single time there's no risk of over carbonating because you're holding it at your 14 or 12 whatever PSI so there's no chance of that over carbonation because that over carbonation sucks yeah like you mentioned uh leaving it upright like that we're allowing it to basically settle out any proteins things like that and then as you're pulling those samples you're clearing out that bottom so you've got if you're using a traditional dip if you're using a floating dip tube you're not you don't even got to worry about that anyway yeah so if you've ever over carbonated your beer and you'll know what I'm talking about for those who haven't yet it's a nightmare you go to pour it and it's just awful um and it's tough to deal with and as a home Brewer there's a few ways to kind of deal with it but let's talk professional first to what they do how do you measure it yeah so we use a device called a zomnagle it measures and you know especially on the commercial side if you're running a canning line and things like that you cannot or you can can over carbonated beer but you're gonna waste a ton of it it's just gonna be foaming out the top um you know like we said tasting the beer is one good thing rolling over your tongue but to measure it you use a zombie basically you you cool the device put the liquid in there shake it and then the pressure that comes out of solution is what it measures so it says hey you're at 2.6 bar in that solution so as a home Brewer what do we do the the best thing probably the only thing we can really do is literally vent The Keg first thing turn your CO2 down uh even unclick the CO2 and Degas and Degas it now don't leave it open just Degas it come by again Degas it come by again I I will do it every 15 to 20 minutes um and yeah I let it go all the way like you know this has gas on it so but I let it go all the way until you can't hear it and then come by and do that again in 15 minutes and it's coming out the same way again you know you're probably still over carbonated and one I guess I mean zom Nagel is an expensive uh piece of equipment but one thing they could do just thinking about it is put a spending valve on there to see once they shake it how much pressure you know I don't know it's not as accurate but you know it gives you an idea of how much came out of solution yeah that that could work especially after you've done that a few times to see I I get a little concerned personally about agitating beer it's harder to pour when it's agitated so if you need it in a hurry I would say your best bet is serving it as cold as humanly possible and um relieving the pressure and even pushing in at first at a lower pressure especially if you need it right away you're having a party people are coming over and it's still gushing on you it's uh that that's a great point the the serving it as cold as possible because we talked about it initially of of uh you know CO2 at cold temperatures wants to stay in solution higher temperatures wants to come out right so like that foaming let's talk about foaming we should probably have an entire discussion about what do we do when we foam yeah that should probably be its own discussion for sure I think that is a good point thanks for watching next episode we're going to be talking about how to deal with foam so be sure to subscribe and hit that notification button [Music] thank you

Channel: MoreBeer!

Views: 32,046

Keywords: carbonating beer, beer, craft beer, carbonation, beer carbonation, force carbonation, carbonating, carbonate beer, force carbonating, how to carbonate beer, home brewing beer, beer carbonating, carbonating beer in a keg, beer brewing, kegging beer, bottling beer, how to force carbonate beer, how to carbonate beer in a corny keg, making beer, beer geek nation, how to brew beer, brewing beer, how to keg beer, fast carbonation, carbonation stone, quick carbonation

Id: VTZCxCe4SY8

Length: 9min 32sec (572 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 22 2022