Thursday 7 January 2010

The CO2 content of Porter

In response to a question about the CO2 content of 1890 Truman Export Stout, featured in yesterday's Let's Brew, here's yet another bloody table.



Have to rush. My curry is burning.

14 comments:

Bailey said...

What beer are you having with your curry?

Ed said...

When you're back from your cury what's the co2 expressed as?

Kristen England said...

These look to be percentages (g/l). the conversion to volumes is basically multiply by 2. These all seem quite low.

Ron Pattinson said...

Bailey, St. Bernardus Prior. It's a very mild curry.

Ron Pattinson said...

Ed, I believe that's percentage by weight.

Bailey said...

We had water with ours in the end but we're going to the pub in a minute.

Adrian said...

"These all seem quite low."

I agree. Taking your multiplication factor of 2 into account, the beers shown vary from basically flat as tap water to barely shimmering.

Certainly nothing near what I would consider "effervescent" or providing "a good, lasting head."

The only thing that's fairly straight forward is that German beers appear to have twice as much C02 as British ones.

Anonymous said...

That Braunschweiger Mumme looks like a meal in its own right: an 18th century British source describes Mum as being strong, which that one clearly is not …

Ron Pattinson said...

Adrian, "German beers appear to have twice as much C02 as British ones." That's not what I see in the numbers. The beers with the highest CO2 content are a couple of German top-fermenters. The lager beers aren't any higher.

Ron Pattinson said...

Zythophile, Mumme had a huge OG but incredibly low attenuation. I don't know if it was ever high in alcohol. Descriptions make it sound more like treacle than beer.

Jeff Renner said...

It's grams per 100 ml, not liter, or percentage by weight, as Ron said.

Typical modern German lagers have CO2 content of 0.45%, or 2.3 volumes, according to Eric Warner book "German Wheat Beers," the only source I know of for homebrewers that uses percent CO2. This seems a much superior way of specifying CO2 content than volume.

So the Barclay und Perkins London Porter, at 0.16%, would be 0.82 volumes, a bit less than what is often cited as typical cask conditioned beer, i.e., one volume, which is often also stated as being saturation.

Tandleman said...

You wouldn't get easily pissed in Braunschweig would you?

Kristen England said...

Yes, sorry, mispoke. g/100ml.

Again, these all seem very low, even the Berliner is low.

Ron Pattinson said...

Tandleman, you wouldn't starve, though. And they probably drank two-handed with a spirit, too.