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Author Topic: temperature and carbonation  (Read 1468 times)

Offline jeeyeop

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temperature and carbonation
« on: December 10, 2015, 01:53:54 pm »
so I'm drinking a can of death by coconut right now while reading stories of people drinking this same beer having issues of exploding cans at room temperature. Now, the cans exploding might be completely unrelated to my question, but it got me wondering...

I noticed on force carbonation charts, colder beers require less PSI's to reach a certain level of carbonation. Why is that? Also, if you force carbonate at say 40F then let the beer reach room temperature later on, do the volumes of CO2 in the beer change?

Offline kramerog

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Re: temperature and carbonation
« Reply #1 on: December 10, 2015, 02:01:07 pm »
CO2 is more soluble in water when it is colder.

The volumes of dissolved CO2 does not change significantly if canned or bottled beer warms up, but the pressure does increase with warmth sometimes resulting in exploding cans or bottles.

Offline jeeyeop

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Re: temperature and carbonation
« Reply #2 on: December 10, 2015, 02:02:30 pm »
alright, so if im understanding correctly. those cans exploded because the warming of the beer caused CO2 to release from the warmer beer where it would be less soluble?

thanks for the info!

Offline kramerog

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Re: temperature and carbonation
« Reply #3 on: December 10, 2015, 02:14:17 pm »
Yes.  Also the beer may have been infected causing CO2 to be produced in the can.

Offline Pi

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Re: temperature and carbonation
« Reply #4 on: December 11, 2015, 10:21:59 am »
Yes.  Also the beer may have been infected causing CO2 to be produced in the can.
+1 Probably something funky going on with the coconut perhaps. See how old the beer is. I had a whole six pack of Flying dog's Deadrise be gushers. I ended up using it to steam crabs.
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Offline a10t2

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Re: temperature and carbonation
« Reply #5 on: December 14, 2015, 10:46:24 am »
My bet would be a seaming issue. It takes an incredible amount of pressure to rupture a properly-seamed can - somewhere around 200 psi.
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Offline brewinhard

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Re: temperature and carbonation
« Reply #6 on: December 14, 2015, 12:57:09 pm »
My bet would be a seaming issue. It takes an incredible amount of pressure to rupture a properly-seamed can - somewhere around 200 psi.

Just like the conference cans handed out at the 2013 NHC in Philly.  We had one rupture in our bathtub in the hotel room.  At least it wasn't on the way home!