Partial Bottle Condition

[BrandenBA]

Comrades

Getting ready to enter a Bavarian Hefeweizen to a local home brewing competition. Since Bavarian Hefs are typically bottle conditioned for the strong haze and frothy head, I wanted to bottle a couple just for the competition, but not the whole batch -- I prefer drinking from the kegerator.

I don't want to over carb the bottles, but I feel like bottling from the kegs wouldn't have the same effect as bottle conditioning. Is there a solution to this? How do I calculate sugars for such a small dose?

[siwelwerd]

For what it's worth, the head is not really related to bottle conditioning (it's more about protein content of the wort/beer), and the guidelines allow for a lot of variability in clarity.

But in general, to just bottle a few bottles, Coopers sells little sugar drops that you can just drop in the bottle: http://www.amazon.com/Coopers-Home-Brew ... B003E5ZYB8 . One probably won't get you the high carbonation you want in a hefeweizen though.

[Ozwald]

It depends on how carbed the beer is in the keg already.

If you're at a known volumes of CO2, you could subtract that from your final desired volumes & prime for the remainder. It likely won't be exact, but it'll give you a relatively close starting point.

On a side note, I've used those Coopers carb tabs before. They're kind of a pain in the ass & rather inconsistent. Some of them are next to impossible to fit through the mouth of the bottle. There's another brand that makes smaller ones that are a little better.

Honestly I don't get enough difference between forced carb & natural carb to make the extra effort worth it. If it were me I'd just CP fill off the keg & be done with it. Or if I *really* wanted natural carbed bottles, I'd set aside enough to do a 6 pack before I kegged it in the first place. Then you just calculate for the smaller volume... about a gallon.

[brewinhard]

I don't think you will have much luck transferring carbonated beer into your bottles along with more sugar. The yeast aren't simply just going to wake up and immediately consume any remaining sugars in the bottle. Once you have kegged, chilled, and carbonated the beer you are drinking it really is done time for the yeast. Their ship has sailed at this point.

Your best bet, as Oz said, is to fill your bottles with a beer gun or counter pressure filler. Be sure to jack up the psi on the gas a couple days before as you will lose some of the pressure upon transfer.