query about carbonation in the secondary

@perfection, I must compliment you on being a persistent person. Perhaps you should change your BA name to “persistent”?

Once again, these are questions best posted on the ProBrewer forum.

If there are no residual sugars remaining in the wort/beer post primary fermentation, and no additional sugars are added when transferring to a secondary (conditioning) tank, then no additional carbonation will be occurring within the conditioning tank. A process called krausening can be implemented in the secondary/conditioning tank whereby some fresh, fermenting wort is added to the beer and if this process was conducted then additional carbonation will occur. I am not familiar with any craft breweries that conduct krausening. You can read more about krausening here:

https://www.anchorbrewing.com/blog/anchor-terminology-krausening/

As to your question about carbonated beer and using a centrifuge I can anecdotally report that I toured a craft brewery that would centrifuge their beer which is carbonated. If there zero loss of CO2 via that process/method I do not know, this was not discussed during the tour. There are several vendors for obtaining a centrifuge (e.g., GEA, Alfa Laval, Trucent, etc.) and several models per vendor. Each brand/model will likely have differing capabilities in this regard.

The commercial brewers who participate in the ProBrewer forums should be able to provide proper input here.

Cheers!

 

I knew a homebrewer / biochemist in the early 70s who had the bright idea of using the lab's centrifuge to clarify his beer before the "krausen". He did add fermentibles to the wort but didn't have enough yeast left to referment in the bottle. Flat beer was the result. I'd say you'd need some really fancy apparatus to centrifuge fermented beer and expect to retain any CO2. (Obviously never a good idea to mix lab biochem facilities with edibles, but safety rules have been revised. No longer are we to use a lab beaker for an after-experiment beer, either.)

 

Yup, you need something purpose built for the brewery. Something like this:



Cheers!

P.S. The brewery tour I alluded to in my above post was Cape May Brewery and I had a one-on-one tour with the Assistant Brewer. They just received their centrifuge a few months earlier and the brewer was quite pleased with how it helped in their brewing operations. As I previously discussed the specific topic of CO2 loss (if it occurred) was not a topic of our conversation.