Making priming sugar more convenient

[caffeine]

Brewed my first batch of Beer Demon 7 days ago. American - Prophecy Ale (HME) with Pale Horse - Pale Export (UME).

Two days ago it looked like fermentation had settled down -- I didn't see any more bubbling in the air lock and there didn't appear to be anything going on in the fermenter, so I assumed it was time to bottle (I just gave it two extra days, just in case). So today I bottled.

Putting priming sugar in the bottles was really inconvenient. I ended up rolling a little bit of paper into a funnel shape and measured out 2 teaspoons plus 1/2 teaspoon of white sugar, pouring it into the paper funnel. It worked OK, but it wasn't optimal -- the paper was obviously not sanitized, although everything else was. I know... I took a chance. We'll see what happens.

Anyway, there's got to be a more convenient way of pouring sugar in a measuring spoon into those thin necked plastic 1L bottles. I'm about to make my 2nd batch soon; a nutbrown ale this time. How can I get a quantity of sugar, measured out with a measuring spoon, through those thin necks without spilling any?

[mashani]

If you want the simplicity of bottle priming and don't want to batch prime, and you don't care about every bottle being "exactly" the same (which is unlikely when measuring with a spoon anyways so probably doesn't matter much), then use Domino's Dots sugar cubes. I still use them unless I am being very picky about style. They make bottle priming painless. No mess, no fuss, just drop the cubes in and go. Takes just a few seconds per bottle.

Use the kind that come 198 cubes to a box. Each cube is about 2.5 grams. They are not going to be totally exact because shaking around in the box leads to little bits of sugar breaking off of some of the cubes. But it's not going to be that much different then measuring with a spoon vs. accurately weighing each dose. And they are *much less expensive* then the bottle priming sugar pellets you can get from coopers/mr. beer/elsewhere.

Use 3 of those cubes per 1L bottle, (or 2 of them in a 750ml bottle, or 1 of them in a 12-16oz bottle).

If you want a bit less carb then use 2 of them in a 1L bottle.

For a light "English Carb" 1 in a 750ml bottle works nicely. 1 in a 1L bottle will be even less, more light a gravity poured cask ale, which many Americans might find off-putting and think of as too flat, but it's actually a thing and useful if you want to simulate that kind of style of beer.

If you want to go nuts and go full on Belgian (think like Duval) or Wheat beer carb levels, then 4 of them in a 1L or 3 of them in a 750ml will do. The PET bottles can handle a lot of pressure, but I can't guarantee you won't get some bottle bombs if you go this high end and you haven't truly fermented out the beer all the way first, or if your bottles get old. But if they are not defective and your beer is fully fermented out you can go this high for those styles of beer. Note that the default priming levels suggested by Brew Demon and Mr. Beer are actually about this much. But it is honestly too much for most styles of beer. I don't know why they suggest so much, but they always have.

[John Sand]

I also used sugar cubes for priming, I liked them.

[HerbMeowing]

Dots are cheap ... quick ... and easy.
Makes me wonder why I don't use them anymore.

[bpgreen]

On a side note, airlock activity is not a good indication of fermentation. Lack of airlock activity is not a good indication that fermentation is complete.

It's probably done after 7 days, but you might like your results better if you ferment for two weeks.

[caffeine]

On a side note, airlock activity is not a good indication of fermentation. Lack of airlock activity is not a good indication that fermentation is complete.

It's probably done after 7 days, but you might like your results better if you ferment for two weeks.

Oh, whoops! I was just following the instructions, but honestly, quality is much more important to me than speed of finishing. There are commercial beers I like, so if I'm going to do this, I want to make sure I *love* the results.

Two weeks? I can do that. But if fermentation is probably over after a week, why would the results after two weeks be better? Doesn't that keep the beer in contact with the trub for a longer period of time?

Thank you!

[mashani]

Doesn't that keep the beer in contact with the trub for a longer period of time?
Thank you!

Yes, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Fermentation makes all sorts of nasty things like acetaldehyde and other stuff that tastes bad and/or will give you nasty headaches. When the yeast run out of sugar to eat they change metabolism to prepare to "go to sleep" until more food shows up. One of thing things they do at this stage is to re-absorb many of those nasty things as a kind of alternative fuel. Leaving it in your fermenter longer makes this process more efficient, the more yeast there is the more of that stuff gets absorbed quickly. It will happen in your bottles too, but it just takes longer. So to get "better beer faster" it is worth leaving it in your fermenter an extra week.

I pitch a lot of yeast - way more then what comes with the kits. Most of my fermentations are technically "done" in 3-5 days but I always leave it in my fermenters for 2 weeks anyways, because I personally am an acetaldehyde super taster, and if I didn't do that, I'd be sad.

The idea that you have to get the beer off the trub fast comes from pressurized commercial brewing environments, where the fermenter geometry itself also applies even more pressure on the yeast cake (think very tall narrow fermenters to maximize floor sqft usage, because vertical feet is "free"). That intense pressure can cause the yeast to throw off other off flavors. But that will not occur in your fermenter, and a pressurized fermentation behaves very differently then what we do to begin with, so they aren't something that can be directly compared. You will find a lot of the old ideas of what homebrewers should do trickled down from commercial lager brewing concepts, and the really just don't apply to us apples to apples.

You could leave the beer in your fermenter for 4-5 even 6 weeks and it would be fine. Many of us here have done it sometimes just by accident or because we went out of town and we came back to perfectly fine beer.

[caffeine]

If you want the simplicity of bottle priming and don't want to batch prime, and you don't care about every bottle being "exactly" the same (which is unlikely when measuring with a spoon anyways so probably doesn't matter much), then use Domino's Dots sugar cubes. I still use them unless I am being very picky about style. They make bottle priming painless. No mess, no fuss, just drop the cubes in and go. Takes just a few seconds per bottle.

Use the kind that come 198 cubes to a box. Each cube is about 2.5 grams. They are not going to be totally exact because shaking around in the box leads to little bits of sugar breaking off of some of the cubes. But it's not going to be that much different then measuring with a spoon vs. accurately weighing each dose. And they are *much less expensive* then the bottle priming sugar pellets you can get from coopers/mr. beer/elsewhere.

Use 3 of those cubes per 1L bottle, (or 2 of them in a 750ml bottle, or 1 of them in a 12-16oz bottle).

If you want a bit less carb then use 2 of them in a 1L bottle.

For a light "English Carb" 1 in a 750ml bottle works nicely. 1 in a 1L bottle will be even less, more light a gravity poured cask ale, which many Americans might find off-putting and think of as too flat, but it's actually a thing and useful if you want to simulate that kind of style of beer.

If you want to go nuts and go full on Belgian (think like Duval) or Wheat beer carb levels, then 4 of them in a 1L or 3 of them in a 750ml will do. The PET bottles can handle a lot of pressure, but I can't guarantee you won't get some bottle bombs if you go this high end and you haven't truly fermented out the beer all the way first, or if your bottles get old. But if they are not defective and your beer is fully fermented out you can go this high for those styles of beer. Note that the default priming levels suggested by Brew Demon and Mr. Beer are actually about this much. But it is honestly too much for most styles of beer. I don't know why they suggest so much, but they always have.

A HUGE thank you for the sugar cube suggestion. That will be a huge game changer, and I look forward to playing around with the number of cubes! I'm excited about my next batch (Right now I'm typing this drinking my first batch of brew and enjoying it immensely).

Batch prime means pouring all the sugar into the fermenter before bottling rather than putting the sugar directly into the bottle? Sounds more convenient, but how do you ensure it dissolves? It's actually not that easy to dissolve sugar completely in cool to room temp liquid.

Right -- Google tells me there's 4g / tsp of sugar. So Brew Demon's recommendation of 2.5 tsp / 1L bottle translates to 10g of sugar / bottle, or, 4 sugar cubes / bottle, assuming 2.5g / cube. I am *so* looking forward to experimenting with this!

[mashani]

For batch priming, you dissolve the sugar in a pot on your stove over heat with some water, and then let it cool and add the liquid to your fermenter or bottling bucket... normally you would use a bottling bucket or extra fermenter (like a second little brown keg or brew demon fermenter) for this - put the sugar solution in, and then rack your entire batch of beer on top of it - that will get it mixed in by the time your done. Then bottle from that bucket or fermenter.

Mixing it in in your fermenter is more likely to lead to stirring up the trub which you probably don't desire.

Me, normally I'd rather just use the sugar cubes, I only do as above if I'm being very picky about my styles carb levels, which I normally am not.

I'm really glad you are enjoying your brew. I enjoy my own so much that I rarely even buy commercial beer anymore, except to try a new style or a beer someone is raving about once in a while.

[bpgreen]

When I batch primed, I used a slimline water container. I'd boil the sugar in a cup of water (don't boil too long or you'll get candy) then start transferring the wort from the lbk to the slimline. I'd set the tube in the slimline so that it would cause a swirling of the wort as it filled the slimline. I'd add the sugar water while the wort was transferring. I didn't bother cooling the sugar water on the theory that it would only kill a small prin of the yeast.

The slimline spigot was a perfect fit for the bottling wand.

[BlackDuck]

I did the exact same thing with the slimline. It worked perfectly.


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