Hi. Just before I was going to keg a beer I inherited a cylinder of "beer gas", regulator, and stout faucet. I decided to put my new beer on "nitro". I'm stilly tweaking it a little; however, I've noticed the beer is much sweeter than expected. I presume this is because the beer has less CO2 in solution, so less of a "bite". I was wondering: are recipes modified for different end uses? In other words, is a recipe modified if it will be used for nitro vs CO2? If so, what are the modifications? I'm thinking more bettering hops. Thanks.
You are correct that beer served with nitrogen will typically have less acidity than ordinary beer, and less acidity results in more malt presence. That is because Nitro infused beer will have less CO2 gas in suspension. It works for malty beers (or it's at least acceptable for some people) whereas Nitro infused IPAs, lagers or really anything with hops that is not primarily malt forward is, IMO, intolerable. Which leads us to recipe modification... Typical Nitro stouts will have less than 2 v/v CO2. So if you are force carbonating with straight CO2, with 75/25 or with re-fermentation in the keg you want to be sure you do not over do the CO2. If there is too much CO2 it will froth like mad once it goes through the stout faucet. I suggest you force carb to about 2 v/v with 100% CO2 and then put your beer on the G Gas cylinder at around 30 psi with the stout faucet. 1, G Gas is relatively expensive and 2, there is not a lot of gas in the cylinder (the nitrogen is gas, not liquid like CO2) the bottles do not last as long. Cheers.
