Temperature and head formation?

[xpops]

I'm currently drinking my second ever homebrew batch - an all grain brown ale. It tastes great, and I'm very happy about that - but I'm experiencing something weird when it comes to carbonation and head formation.

It seems its been kind of inconsistent from bottle to bottle, whether it seems properly carbed with decent head formation, to almost no head and flat/watery tasting.

At first I figured it was due to my priming sugar not being mixed properly...chalked it up to a rookie mistake.

I then started paying more attention and keeping track when I'm drinking this batch.

So far 100% of the time, if I take it out of fridge, and crack it right away...I get no head formation, and it tastes flat. If I take it out of the fridge, let it sit out for 20-30 minutes first, it has excellent carbonation, great head formation, and it actually tastes better!

I can't seem to find any threads referencing temperature changes and head formation/carbonation - so I'm looking for other people's experiences, or references if there are articles out there I've missed??

Is it something to do with CO2 absorption and temperature changes? Is it really possible its a bad priming sugar mixture and its pure luck whether I crack it right away, or let it sit out a bit? It seems like too much of a coincidence...

Let me know if you have any insight!!

Thanks!!

 

[Snowden]

A few quick questions:

1) did you batch prime in your bottling bucket or individually prime each bottle?

2) how long ago did you bottle it?

3) how long do you have the bottles in the fridge before cracking them open?


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[xpops]

Thanks for quick reply!

1)Batch prime in bottling bucket. Racked batch onto half the mixture, added second half of mixture halfway through.
2)bottled 6 weeks ago
3)doesn't seem to make a difference if its been in the fridge 48 hours, or 5 days.

Thanks!

 

[Denny]

CO2 is absorbed more readily into cold liquids than warm ones. By letting it warm up you are encouraging the CO2 to come out of solution.

There's a whole world of stuff that affects foam..read this....http://byo.com/stories/article/indices/35-head-retention/697-getting-good-beer-foam-techniques

 

[xpops]

Yes thanks, I've gone through that article before. The fact you raise about it being more readily absorbed in cold liquids makes more sense at this point...its almost as if the beer is too cold to release the co2!

Its strange that I have another batch that creates a nice head at the same temperature. Its a black IPA with a much higher IBU and hop content, which ive also read contributes to good head formation.

 

[Denny]

Yeah, the tannins in the hops bind the proteins in the beer. More hops = more foam