I bottled a Cream Ale and used priming sugar for conditioning. I almost always allow my beers to condition two weeks or more before sampling. I’m going to see some out of town friends and want to give them the chance to sample the cream ale after one week of conditioning. What results should I expect?
Any insight/advice would be appreciated. Should I just let it sit and give them other styles to sample?
Thanks.
It will likely be carbonated in a week, perhaps not all the way but good enough. Is there a warm spot in your house where you can store the beer, like at 73-75 F if possible? This will speed things up. Then of course be sure to refrigerate a few hours before drinking.
Thank you for the feedback! I have a good warmer spot to put it.
If sampling is in a week, I would probably do 5 days of warm conditioning for refermentation and 2 days of cold conditioning to drop the yeast as much as possible. Inverting the bottles for a few seconds 2-4 times a day will speed up the process (you do not need to do this with every bottle, just the ones you will be sampling).
You won’t know til you try
I always test one after the first week just to see how they are carbonating.
I’d imagine you will have carbonation, but you may also have some sweetness from the sugar that is not fully consumed. If you are gonna share the bottle with a group of friends I’d just preface that it’s young.
I’ve done that for friends before and they aren’t beer nerds so they don’t even understand what I’m talking about.
Here’s an old trick from Jeff Renner - mark the top of the liquid with a sharpie on the bottle neck. As the beer carbonates, the volume will appear larger, few millimeters above the mark. This may save you from opening a lot of bottles to check. If it hasn’t changed then it hasn’t carbonated.
I rarely bottle condition, but when I do, I bottle one plastic pint bottles do squeeze it slightly before tightening the screw on cap. When that bottle is firm, the carb is done.
Thank you all for the input. It was pretty well carbonated after one week. I only opened one bottle so we’ll see if there’s any difference after two weeks.
When I’m trying to speed up carbonation of bottles, I’ll place them on the wooden floor in my utility room which contains the clothes washer, dryer, hot-water heater and furnace–all in a relatively small space.
It’s warmer than elsewhere in the house and the vibrations of the washer on the spin cycle and the spinning dryer drum may also help keep the yeast “roused.”
Some brewers like to use a plastic bottle and squeeze it periodically to check the progress of the carbonation.
I prefer to sample it beginning on the fourth or fifth day after bottling even though I know it will need more time. At age 71, it’s like Christmas morning all over again each time I get to sample a bottle of something I’ve brewed.
I cold crash my beer, but I don’t filter it. The last few bottles from the bottling bucket usually may have a bit more sediment and air in them so I drink them first for my own consumption.