Does SN Pale Ale usually look like this?

Aside from time, what are the (if any) advantages of force carbing beer?

 

New Glarus cask-conditions most of their beers in brite tanks or giant wooden casks. They greatly prefer natural to forced carbonation.

 

Krausening is adding some newly boiled and cooled wort (pre-fermentation), for a new batch of beer, to the "old" beer to jump-start the yeast for carbonation -- basically the same as bottle conditioning, but many home-brewers opt to just boil up some corn sugar or dry malt extract in water, cool it, and add it to the fermented beer they're about to bottle.

Some of my harder-core friends would plan far ahead to start a new batch of beer and utilize a little of the new wort for conditioning -- thus krausening.

 

Time (less time) is the advantage of force carbonation. For commercial breweries, time = money.

I am not aware of any other advantages for force carbonation.

Cheers!

 

It is a more reliable or easier way to carbonate a very high ABV beer.

 

Also - to be 100% certain that a barrel aged beer actually carbonates! (see Lost Abbey/Port Brewing's past woes)

 

I certainly agree with the easier (as in saving time). Many Belgian breweries are able to consistently carbonate high ABV beers via bottle conditioning.

Cheers!

 

I am unfamiliar with whatever issue(s) Lost Abbey had but I do agree that force carbonation 'works' every time. As a homebrewer, bottle conditioning has worked every time for me including high ABV and extended aged beers.

Maybe Lost Abbey should hire me!?!

Cheers!

 

Don't forget about East End's "Flatitude" years.

 

A few years back, many people complained about bottles of various batches of Angel's Share and some other beers.
Their stance on the issue did not exactly earn them much good will. For example, see this interview with Tomme Arthur (the 4th question down the page) http://thefullpint.com/breweries/port-brewing/interview-with-tomme-arthur/

I haven't seen much talk about the issue recently, so maybe they fixed their issues.

 

Yeah, but at least they did the right thing and didn't screw their customers.

 

You don't add sugar or some other fermentable (i.e., powdered malt extract) before bottling, to give the yeast some food to make a bit more alcohol but, more importantly, to create the CO2 to carbonate the beer? That's the more "modern" method homebrewers use. The Prohibition era homebrewers often bottled based on a hydrometer reading (w/ just enough sugar left), which gave homebrew the reputation of often creating basement bottle bombs.

 

Most force-carbed craft beers are also pasteurized, no? I don't know which factor is bigger than the other, but I could certainly see some breweries choosing to force-carb in order to reduce the chance of infection.

 

It is my understanding that the majority of craft breweries do not pasteurize their beers; the mega-breweries do pasteurize their beers.

Maybe @jesskidden has figures on which breweries pasteurize vs. not pasteurize?

Cheers!

 

Yes, I added sugar. But I still had sediment. It's been years but if I remember correctly it was dextrose (?).

 

Yeah (and, again, one of those topics that come up frequently, but with 1000+ packaging breweries...hard to put an exact figure on them) not a lot of pasteurization going on in most craft breweries. Anchor flash pasteurizes everything (kegs and bottles), IIRC New Belgium and New Glarus have a few beers each they pasteurize, and, one expects, the beers brewed/contract brewed at old line breweries like Matt, Spoetzl, The Lion, BBC., etc., are probably typically pasteurized.

Well, MillerCoors does microfilter/sterile-fill several of their beers (Coors Banquet, Miller Genuine Draft) and neither AB or MC routinely pasteurize their domestic kegged beers.

@RichardMNixon - What's the connection between force carbonation and pasteurization?

 

I'm drinking a can conditioned SNP right now and there is a some sediment in the bottom of my glass and it tastes great. It's a live beer there will be some yeast and maybe some hop sediment.

 

Sorry, that's more what I meant than a real heat-based Pasteurization like in milk. My impression was that most American craft breweries strive to remove living cells from beer before packaging; is that not correct? Rodenbach comes up often as an example of a beer that shouldn't be aged because it's pasteurized; is that a heat treatment or some other process to remove cells?

If you pasteurize it, there's nothing left to naturally carbonate it. Forced carbonation becomes your only option.

 

It will put hair on your chest.

 

That's true for bottle conditioning (in most cases*), but you originally asked if:

...which isn't the case. Many forced-carbed beers are not pasteurized.

And, of course, since tunnel pastuerization is done after bottling, it doesn't matter if the the beer was forced-carbed or carbonated in bulk (bunged, tank conditioned or kraeusened).

* Some brewers supposedly flash pasteurize, then bottle with new, often different, yeast, and bottle condition that way.