More Carbonation

[MSR]

I bottled my last brew on the weekend, when filling the bottles there was no head at all whereas my previous brew was really heady. Someone told me to shake the bottles a week after bottling and that will carb it up more and give me more head on the beer.

Has anyone heard of doing this??

MSR

 

[braufrau]

I bottled my last brew on the weekend, when filling the bottles there was no head at all whereas my previous brew was really heady. Someone told me to shake the bottles a week after bottling and that will carb it up more and give me more head on the beer.

Has anyone heard of doing this??

MSR

The only way that could help is if it put more yeast into suspension and somehow helped
it ferment a few more milligrams of sugar.
Although I always invert each bottle once after putting the seal on to get the sugar
off the bottom, but if you're bulk priming that's not important.


There's few variables to produce a good head.
1. You need some live yeast in the bottle.
2. You need the right amount of sugar or other fermentable for it to eat.
3. You need to ferment the contents of the bottle at the right temperature. In winter this
is a problem for me, so I sit the cartons of stubbies in my fermenting box with mat and thermostat
set to ~20C for two weeks. Summer I just shove 'em in the cupboard.
4. For head retention you need some frothy compounds which you can get from
crystal malt or wheat malt which might be in the ingredients of your kit, or may not be!

 

[chris.taylor.98]

Hi MSR,

You will also find that the temperature of the beer that you are bottling will influence how "heady" the beer appears to be.

The colder the beer, the more residual CO2 it will contain, and the bigger the head you see as you bottle it. In fact you should consider this residual CO2 if you want to aim for a certain carbonation level.

As braufrau said, don't think that shaking it is going to do much for the head retention.

 

[MSR]

Thanks guys, really appreciate your advice.

I inverted the bottles after adding the sugar and there is some wheat malt in the brew. My beers are sitting in boxes in my garage at 18 - 20C so after reading what you guys said I think I'll just leave them be.

Cheers

MSR