Still Bubbling……

Well, I just checked on my chili beer fermenter and it is still happily bubbling away, even after a week of hot and heavy fermentation. So I will just let it keep chugging.

As I sat there staring at the bubbles running through the airlock, I started thinking about carbonation, and the question hit me. Which is better natural carbonation or artificial/force carbonation? Now depending on who you are, how you like to brew, what kind of beer you like, and numerous other questions you could be on either side. In the beer world this question can draw the same kind of crazy passion as the age old question of “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”

Here are my opinions on the subject, and that’s all they are just opinions. I lean much more towards natural carbonation, maybe because it is all I have ever been able to do as a homebrewer. I never have been set up with a CO2 tank and corny kegs, so I have always just primed with a little corn sugar and let the yeast finish the carbonation in the bottle. However, I don’t feel that, that is the only reason. I like natural carbonation, because it appeals to my artistic and creative side. To natural carbonate the beer, you have to add a little sugar to the beer and let the remaining yeast ferment the sugar in the bottle and build the CO2 necessary for the perfect head. So by naturally carbonating a beer, you are basically leaving the beer unfiltered, this leaves the yeast in the bottle and turns the each bottle into it’s own “living” creature. As the beer bottle conditions, the yeast finish their processes and then settle to the bottom. Now the yeast are free to contribute to their own unique flavors to the beer as it ages. The longer the beer is allowed to condition on its own yeast, the more the flavor can change and contribute to beer’s structure. So a beer that you taste weeks after bottling can have a different flavor than the same beer that is opened a few months later. The ever changing flavors of the evolving beer fascinates me and really sways me to the natural carbonation side.

Now don’t get me wrong, force carbonating has its place. When you force carbonate, it is much easier to get a precise CO2 level that will correspond to the amount of  head that the beer will have. So you have more control over the amount of CO2. You also tend to get more microbial stability in the beer if you have the ability to filter the beer. Because you don’t have to rely the yeast to produce those beautiful little bubbles, you can filter the beer and remove all of the yeast and any other type of haze producing particles, which leaves you with a brighter, more clear, and sometimes cleaner tasting beer. You don’t have to worry about the yeast flocculating out and creating that mushy sediment layer on the bottom of each bottle. Most people don’t like to see that sediment and they especially don’t want to drink it.

***On a side note, some people really don’t mind the sediment and think that it all adds to the flavor. I had the opportunity to work and live in the Riverland of Australia for a month and a half. While I was over there I made sure to try as many Australian beers as I could. It was in these beer tastings with many of my Australian co-workers, that I was introduced to Cooper’s. Now Cooper’s is a pretty decent mass produced beer company that not only produces beer but also homebrew kits. But Cooper’s also bottle conditions its mass produced beer, so there is always a nice little yeast cake on the bottom of each bottle. So before I opened my first bottle my Australian counterpart told me to invert the bottle and swirl the cake back into the beer, “It’s better that way, this is the way real Australians drink this beer, and if you don’t do this before every Cooper’s,  we’ll probably call you a ‘stupid American’”. Now he told  me all of this with a good laugh. So I drank the first Cooper’s like a real Australian, but like many things when I’m drinking I forgot to swirl the next bottle and got my fair share of ball busting “Stupid American” comments as they laughed at me. But in my mistake I got to taste the same beer two ways and I must admit, I liked it much better with all of that sediment mixed back into the beer.

Well that was a rather long side note I know, but anyway the next time you pop a top or pry off a crimp on cap, and here that familiar “psssssssssssssst”, take a minute to think about whether the beer was bottle conditioned or force carbonated and decide which you think is better. Enjoy!