I use approximately 85% of the priming sugar recommended by standard priming calculators. I don’t need so much carbonation, and it also provides insurance against the occasional gusher (which does still happen on rare occasion).
Another factor is that I don’t drink a batch as quickly as others.
First sample is at 6-8 weeks in bottle, and don’t really start
drinking the batch until 10-12 weeks. I discovered over months the
carbonation increases, not as much,very small, but still increases.
Usually at 12 weeks carbonation is right where I want it. My pipeline
is sufficient, so waiting is not an issue. Chilling in fridge a few days
before drinking also seems to help. Occasionally if it’s a tad under
carbonated, I wait it out, chill it properly then carbonation is spot on.
The hops do fade over time, but this is a welcomed change.
My current trend is swaying away from very hoppy beers.
I’m with you guys on the carbonation thing. My beer is a little less carbonated than some of my friends beers. I do not like my beer to be bubbly, like champagne, or soda-pop. Smoothness is what my taste prefers, over bubbles.
And I agree with Fire Rooster here…staying away from highly-hopped beers. In my younger days (much younger) I was a die hard Hop Head. Not any more!
We have graduated to beers more balanced in overall character, like those beers on draft in Germany, Amsterdam, Prague, etc.
Just give me a nice Munich Helles, or a good German Pils on draft. That makes my day!
Agreed, personal preference plays a lot into this. Taste is subjective and there are no right answers as such.
Same here. I have dropped the hop bitterness in my IPA’s. When my wife was still smoking, the hoppier the beers, the better. Now that she no longer smokes and her sense of taste has returned to normal, I cut the hops down to make the beers more drinkable rather than being a total hop bomb.
I keg carbonate my beers at around 2.5 volumes of CO2 and bottle from the keg. When I am sending beers to a competiton I turn the keg pressure up a bit the ight before bottling to insure that there has been little carbonation loss during the bottling process (I use a Beer Gun to bottle for comps.). I then turn the pressure back down so I don’t over carbonate the beer and get excessive foaming when drawing a pint. Saisons are a different story, 3 volumes of CO2 to make the beer effervescent.
Planned next two batches, only one 1/2 oz 60 minute hop addition,
one batch with magnum-pellet, another with nugget-pellet. EST IBU’s 24 & 20.
Never gone that low with IBU, but I think lower IBU might be my thing.
If it works out will switch to leaf-hops, which can easily fit in the hop spider.
Hop spider was an issue with leaf hops when using many oz’s.
For some time focused on good malts.
Only recently realized the malt was being overshadowed by the hops.
Was following the heard for awhile regarding hops.