Bottling Times and cold crashing

Possibly.

All other things being equal, higher temperatures will result in faster carbonation. And as you correctly imply, more sugar is not the answer.

 

Since you add so little priming sugar the development of off flavors during bottle conditioning is not a big worry.

What temperature do you store your bottles during bottle condition? At room temperature (e.g., 70°F) it should only take 2 weeks for full carbonation to occur (for moderate gravity beers).

Cheers!

 

Jack said it. 70F is great for bottle carbonating. If your low/mid gravity beers are taking 4 weeks at 70F, I'd look at yeast health.

 

Patience is well worth the reward. Yes, bottle conditioning at higher temps will net faster carbing, however do you really want to worry about how warm is too warm? I let all my beers carb and condition at 65. It takes some times, but it is well worth it. Mmost of my low to mid gravity beers hit their primme at 6 weeks as far as flavor and carbing go, but my big boys really come into their own at 3 months. Once you learn the patience in the beginning and get a good cycle going you will always have good beer on hand.

 

NO
If it's carbonated properly after 4 weeks, more sugar is not the answer.

 

Temp and amount of sugar are not related in terms of producing carbonation.

 

I leave mine in my room to carb, so the speed of carbonation depends on the temperature. It's never TOO hot or cold, btw, but it's certainly warmer in summer, and they carb faster. To me it's a patience thing tho. When they're done, they're done. Tho I use mostly bombers for bottling, I always make a few 12 oz bottles for testing. Right now it's cold and my room is cold so I'll probably pop the first test bottle (of saturday's bottling) at about 2 weeks.

I have only had one batch take longer than two weeks to carbonate. I don't really know why that one was so slow, probably just less viable yeast for whatever reason (everything else was about average, inc. abv). It did eventually carbonate just fine tho after about six weeks, with eight or nine weeks "prime."

 

No, its a very simple and standard calculation. The factors that effect the amount of sugar you would need are the volume of beer you are bottling and the residual CO2 which is a factor of time and temp in the fermentors.

Edit: With regard to a higher OG the only thing you may need more of is yeast at bottling time. If you have a higher alcohol beer and stressed out yeast, you may need to add fresh yeast when bottling to make sure they will be able to consume the priming sugar.

 

As OddNotion said, no. Try using a calculator, like this one...
http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipator/carbonation.html

 

You can get a digital scale for less than $20. And honestly, I don't how anyone could brew without one. Grains, hops, sanitizer, priming sugar… it all needs to be weighed.

 

Scales are pretty important in brewing. Without one, you'll be introducing a lot of variation. So even if you brew and carbonate the 'perfect' batch, it will be hard to repeat.

 

I believe that 3/4 of a cup of dextrose weighs about 4.5oz although I also recommend buying a scale and weighing your ingredients.

 

I think if you weighed your eyeballed splits, you might be surprised. A 10% error can throw your bitterness and/or flavor/aroma extraction by, let's see... about 10%.

It really isn't always the same. (But some kinds of sugar are better behaved than others.) But even if the density is exactly the same, one cup won't be the same as the next even in terms of volume. Maybe 'close enough' (per personal choice) but not as close as weighing precisely. And try googling table sugar (sucrose, maybe the best behaved example) weight per cup. I bet you get more than one (different) answer. That's because the density isn't always the same, and because a cup is not the same as the next.

A couple other reasons for an accurate scale...
- Mash/Kettle salt additions, to 10ths of grams. Particularly important for mash pH.
- Fractions of ounces for roasted malts. Being off there can make a significant flavor difference in some beers. Do you trust your LHBS to weigh out 0.3 ounces of Black Patent to add just the right touch of 'burnt' to a brown ale, for example?