Priming calculations for bottling

I am curious about the priming ratios in terms of beer temperature. When the calculator asks for the temp of the beer, is it the current temp or the temp that you plan to condition at? I am asking because I always cold crash and the beer temp at bottling is usually about 40 degrees.

Then you would calculate for 40F. It might go up a couple of degrees during the bottling process but I don’t think that would make too much difference. You MIGHT consider letting it move up to room temp as and then calculate as you will probably be conditioning at ~70. I’ve never had this issue come up… so, someone smarter will help. It may work out to carb for 70* and let it warm after capping… dunno. I charge at conditioning temp… or 70*. The answer will help me as I’d like to explore CC’ing.

[quote=“GoldenTrout”].When the calculator asks for the temp of the beer, is it the current temp or the temp that you plan to condition at?[/quote]The calculator is asking for the temp in order to estimate the CO2 that is already in the beer - colder beer holds more CO2. So you should use the max temp the beer reached post fermentation - if you fermented at 68F, then cold-crashed to 40F, use 68. There is very little if any fermentation going on once you cold-crash, so if you were to use 40, you would end up under-carbing (because the calculator will cut the sugar to compensate for the non-existent CO2 in solution).

+1
Perfectly right. The residual CO2 from fermentation will gas out at higher temps. So if you had a lager fermenting at 50F, raised it to 65F for D-rest, then dropped it down to 32F for lagering, you would use 65F in the calculator. The liquid can only “hold on” to a certain amount of CO2. The higher the temp, the less CO2 will stay in the beer and the more is released.