Nottie and krausen formation

[Bubbles]

Ok lads so final gravity with hydrometer looking like a 1.012/1.013...
Racked off last night with a very healthy looking yeast cake, no signs of infection and what seems to my taste buds to be a very tasty beer!

Happy days. If it tastes nice out of the fermenter, it's sure to taste nice after a few weeks conditioning in the bottle.

[irish_goat]

If it's decent you might want to enter it in the competition too. http://www.nationalhomebrewclub.ie/competition 

[CC]

I would enter it but I'm not confident with my priming/carbonation skills just yet...
For better or worse I decided to rack the first 10 and last 10 bottles with no sugar (my thought process here is that these are the most likely to have higher yeast counts and if left alone for long enough should condition just fine... I was chatting to Paul from Beoir Chorca Dhuibhne last summer on a trip to Kerry and he said that he thinks there is a different mouth feel to a beer conditioned without sugar- he reckons you get finer or smaller co2 bubbles)
I then racked 10 bottles with 1/2 teaspoon caster sugar and a further 8 with 1/4 teaspoon caster sugar...
I'm not too sure what to expect but something along the line of :
1/2 teaspoon conditioned after 3 wks
1/4 teaspoon conditioned after 6wks
No sugar conditioned after 8 wks
What is your experience guys??

[Bubbles]

I would enter it but I'm not confident with my priming/carbonation skills just yet...
For better or worse I decided to rack the first 10 and last 10 bottles with no sugar (my thought process here is that these are the most likely to have higher yeast counts and if left alone for long enough should condition just fine... I was chatting to Paul from Beoir Chorca Dhuibhne last summer on a trip to Kerry and he said that he thinks there is a different mouth feel to a beer conditioned without sugar- he reckons you get finer or smaller co2 bubbles)
I then racked 10 bottles with 1/2 teaspoon caster sugar and a further 8 with 1/4 teaspoon caster sugar...
I'm not too sure what to expect but something along the line of :
1/2 teaspoon conditioned after 3 wks
1/4 teaspoon conditioned after 6wks
No sugar conditioned after 8 wks
What is your experience guys??

I think you've misunderstood something here.. assuming I understood your post..

The beer is not going to carbonate without sugar, not if it's fully fermented out. The residual yeast has nothing to consume in order to create CO2! The brewer you were speaking with was probably referring to the difference between force carbonated and bottle conditioned beers.

If I was you, I'd get some carb drops or a small amount of sugar into those bottles you neglected to prime.

[irish_goat]

That brewer might also have been talking about carbing using malt extract. The talk on the internet is that it produces finer co2 bubbles. It would definitely leave some more residual malt sweetness but whether or not it would make a difference in such small doses I'm not sure.

I use this calculator for carbonation. http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipator/carbonation.html

[CC]

no the conversation was about the relative merits of different sugars as stimulants for bottle conditioning (not forced carbing). we were comparing carbonation levels and in particular mouth feel for the different types of sugars...dme,sucrose, dextrose fructose.

the argument made was that seeing as no yeast has a 100% attenuation rate there must always be sugar remaining in your beer.
at its very best nottie can attenuate to a final gravity of 1.008...even at this, there must still be some sugars left in solution in the beer- otherwise the final gravity would have to be the same as the water that was used to make the beer....
so if my final gravity reads at 1.012 (which is fairly standard for nottie) i must have an amount of sugar left for bottle conditioning...then as long as there is viable yeast (ie non floculated yeast) in suspension bottle conditioning must happen.

if i remember correctly (this conversation was had at the brewery pub over a few too many cask ales!) paul put forward a theory that the attenuation rate achieved by a yeast relates  in some cosmic/natural order of the world way, to its floculation rate so that if there is very little sugar left in the final beer there will be lots of viable yeast and vice versa....thus it was his opinion that allowing  for the right amount time and temperature etc all beers should bottle condition naturally, if brewed properly and in particular if the correct temperatures are maintained for the yeast, and this is preferable to adding sugars....

i don't know... only one way to find out i spose!!

[molc]

Hehe, well, yeast can't actually convert all types of sugar, maltotriose being the trickiest and maltodextrose just being too much for its wee mouth to fit. Also, as they convert, they are making an environment which doesn't exactly suit them, which doesn't help either.

Attenuation depends on yeast health, growth rates and the fermentation environment as well, so even if there is some residual sugar, you'd need fresh yeast and it will be impacted by the low oxygen and high alcohol environment in which it now finds itself.

Tl/Dr, give the poor buggers some easy sugar to carb - we give them a hard enough time as it is making our delicious nectar.

[Bubbles]

Hmm.. if that's the case then it contradicts everything I've ever read about bottle conditioning. The implication is that yeast will just keep eating residual sugars, but I have beers that are three years old whose carbonation level hasn't changed since they were first fully carbed. Molc emphasises the point that these sugars are simply unfermentable by brewers yeast after the beer has achieved final gravity.

I don't think it's correct to say that notty cannot ferment beyond 1.008. Attenuation levels are dependent on many factors - mash temps, recipe etc. You're basing your approach on this theory, that you still have another 4 points to ferment out if you just exercise patience. I just can't see this happening.

But if you can find a written source to back up this theory, I'd love to read it. As I said, it contradicts every brewing book I've ever read.

I'd fully expect those bottles to be flat as a pancake in a years time. But, it's your beer and your experiment. Just my two cents, as they say.