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Carbonation factor: what temperature default to use?

Slurk

Grandmaster Brewer
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Apr 4, 2012
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Foeynland, Norway
Yesterday I bottled my Wit Bier. When calculating the amount of table sugar I needed for bottling, I used the rescale tool. I noticed a too large difference in the amount of table sugar calculated. I found out that, due to different temperature settings in the "recipe" carbonation tool and the carbonation rescale tool, BS is suggesting to use significantly different amounts of table sugar. In the "recipe" carbonation tool my default is 70F while the carbonation rescale tool used 40F as a standard.

Question 1: should I correct for the temperature that I use during the bottle fermentation (in my case 60 - 70F) or should I use the storage temperature (in my case 51 - 54F)?

Question 2: why is there such a significant difference (is yeast behaving different/physical conditions etc.)?

Regards,
Slurk

 
Cold beer can hold more residual CO2 in solution from the natural fermentation process than can warm beer, so you should enter the storage temp.  If you used 70F when the beer was a lager sitting at 38F, BSmith would likely call for more sugar than was needed. 

I have wondered whether the beer loses much CO2 in the transfer to the bottling bucket, but from my personal experience, when I started using the Carbonation Tool in BSmith my carbonation levels got much better. 
 
Thanks Maltlicker!
By taking the bottle fermentation temperature as a default it looks like that I have overcarbonated my beers consequently. Said this, I only once experienced a surprisingly overcarbonated beer. I feel I've overcarbonated by 2 carb.factor steps.

I will correct for this when I bottle my IPA next week. However, going from 70F to 52F, I will take an "in between temperature" first to see the result before adjusting totally to my storage temperature at +/-52F.

Regards,
Slurk
 
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