I am brewing an ordinary bitter. I am planning to use Jamil’s recipe from Brewing Classic Styles. In the book he recommends carbonating to 1-1.5 volumes. That’s seems very low.
He states “Since this beer is fairly light body, excessive carbon dioxide can make it seem extra thin, harsh, and hard to drink.”
I am curious if mashing at a higher temp to increase body would be an alternative here? Jamil suggests mashing at 152F. I wonder if 160F would increase the body enough to carbonate at 2.4 volumes.
My keg set up has just 1 regulator and I leave it at 11 PSI which is about 2.4 volumes. Having one keg at 0.4 PSI (Beersmith recommendation for 1.5 volumes) would be challenging.
If you have a shutoff valve for each keg you can just turn the one to the bitter off once you get close to your desired carbonation level. Open it up occasionally to keep enough pressure to pour and it will creep up in carbonation very slowly.
Mashing high will help with the body of the beer - 160 should be good - and it might help to offset a higher carbonation level, but not overcome it.
I do what Troy suggests all the time. Got one in the keezer as I write this. A highly carb’d bitter is just not as enjoyable. The carbonation ruins the malt to bittering hops taste experience.
0.4 psig is not enough pressure to get beer out of a keg when it is half empty. (1 psig = 2.3 ft H2O, 0.4 psig = 0.92 ft). You’ll want more pressure or to use a CO2/N2 blend or turning the keg onto its side.
I’ve struggled with same thing. If the beer gets over carbed I do the syringe trick, where you suck up some of the beer in the glass and then shoot it back into the beer. It knocks out some of the co2 and puts a nice creamy head on the beer.
Works well for me.