Bottle Conditioning / Carbonation for Salted Caramel Chocolate Milk Stout

[merrydown]

Hi,

Approximate Recipe
I am coming up on bottling time for the 25L Salted Caramel Chocolate Milk Stout/Porter I am brewing based on: Hapless Ginger Brew's recipe:

Recipe and Video on YouTube

Bottling Plan
Anyway, I bottle, I haven't got as far as kegs yet. After adding the cocoa nibs with a blast of CO2 over it and giving it 5 days or so, before cold crashing for 3 days. The plan being to transfer it into the bottling bucket with some priming sugar and gentle stiring then bottling it.

I've not brewed an all grain porter/stout before and Hapless said he was cautious not to overcarb it (he kegs). From what I see, this kind of beer would be carbonated in the region of 1.7 - 2.3 volumes. I figured a target of 2 volumes would be a safe bet.

Calculations
From what I read and using the brewers friend priming calculator, when beer is cold crashed at around 2.5C you can expect 1.56 volumes already in the beer. So the recommended addition for 25L would be just 47.9 grammes dextrose / brewing sugar!

Previously, I've always brought the beer back to room temperature before bottling and used more like 130 grammes of priming sugar, so this seems strangely low. I'd like a reasonable head on it and a reasonable bit of carbonation. Priming always seems to fall one side or other of expected so I'd love some opinions.

Query
Does 2 volumes and this method / quantity of priming sugar sound good?

Would you bring the beer to room temperature to bottle or go from cold crash, which sounds good to me?

Any advice at all would be gratefully received.

Jim

 

[honeymonster]

I'd wouldn't bother bringing the beer to room temp but i'd use the warmest temp the beer was at during fermentation in the calculator. If I fermented at 18C and then cold crashed at 3C then I'd put 18C in the calc.

If you think about how long it takes to force carb using the low and slow method, there's no way that so much CO2 is going to be absorbed from the headspace back into the beer after a couple of days NOT under pressure. Most of it will be gone out the airlock anyways!

 

[merrydown]

That sounds pretty wise, thanks HoneyMonster.

The beer will have spend only a fraction of the time at the lower temperature. To be fair, the priming guide I mention above does say that it is a negotiation between temperatures the beer has been at, I didn't totally get the import of that at the time.

Those figures of 3C and 18C are about right, for crash / fermentation temperatures. You would make no allowance for the cold crash time at all then?

 

[honeymonster]

Yep, no allowance for the cold crash.

When I bottled I always primed based on fermentation temp and never had an issue and that included cold crashing for about a week.

 

[merrydown]

Thank you very, very much. I would have hopelessly undercarbed!

All the best!

 

[merrydown]

Well the 3rd time I've tried this brew and the first where she was properly carbonated. What a drink. Totally lush... Very highly recommended.