Undercarbonation!
As with most everything I’ve learned, it’s deeply rooted in my mistakes. After round 2 of the Brew or Cry, I was told that my beer was mildly undercarbonated. This was also noted about my beer in Round 1. At home I thought the carbonation was great in a freshly poured pint.
I’m thinking about that again and was just rereading the tips page from Homebrewfinds.com and something stood out to me in particular. Tip #20 is about filling a quick bottle or growler. I have been using a cheap growler filler attachment and got a lot of foaming, what I was forgetting was to adjust the pressure. Using that attachment at 10-12 PSI was far too high. The author suggests turning my pressure down to 2-3 PSI for optimal results. Now if you knew this already, hooray for you! For us Keg-Newbs, I thought I’d share.
I have linked to his page here, and also copied the page to our site as a quick reference.
UPDATE:
After a little Facebook conversation, I also know that I force carbed my beer style too low. I used my standard force carbonation regiment, instead of turning the PSI up a little for the style.
This handy should be helpful to anyone.
FORCE CARB CHART
-Mick, Master of interWebs