I'm bottling tonight (Friday, im a night stalker so I dont want the boss thinking im bottling beer on his dime... im just doing research on his dime)
I did a quick search of the bottling forum because it had been too long and I forgot what the temp calculation was. Jonathan, you finally got it through my thick skull. Its highest temp after completion of fermentation but before bottling, and the reason why is pre existing CO2 in solution. Now it makes sense. If the beer never got above 50 it will have more CO2 already in it than it would if it had gotten up to say 80. And if it drops back down after that high point, its done fermenting so it shouldn't make more.
So... my two batches i will be priming and bottling finished fermentation at 68º, then crashed for 24hrs at 35º, so I will enter 68º in the calculator.
This is probably why my early bottle condiyioned beers were never what I expected in carbonation, because I thought it was temp at bottling.
Huge help, and now I think I know about bottling finally.
Thanks
Now, lets apply this to the importance of fermentation temperature control. If you have no temp control, unless you take hourly readings after fermentation is complete, how do you know what the highest temp was? If you guess it got to 68, and you want 2 volumes in 5 gallons, you need 3.06oz of corn sugar. But if it had gotten up to 78 while you were busy, you need 3.36oz, so you'll be about 10% flatter than you wanted. Another good excuse to get temp control.
By the way I won't be using ounces, I'll use grams. I like having 280 marks per ounce rather than just 10.