Bottling for carbonation

[Tapakegaday]

Just bottled my first batch, put the sugar in each bottle like the directions said to do. Do I need to flip bottles every now and then to make sure the sugar stays dissolved?


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[mashani]

It will dissolve on its own and the yeast will find it and eat it.

Just walk away and come back to it in 4 weeks.

[Kealia]

Mashani is wise....heed his advice.

I think we all felt like we needed to do that when we started, but you don't. Like he said, just leave them to do their thing.

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[Bluejaye]

Like they said, just walk away and leave it be for 4 weeks. We know it's hard.

[Scoper50]

I would still consider myself an amateur but I do have a little over a dozen batches under my belt. I have found that adding the sugar to each bottle gets mixed results. It's way easier to add the full amount of sugar for the batch to the bottling bucket so it gets evenly distributed to the entire batch. This makes sure each bottle is evenly carbonated and each beer in the batch will be the same. A good rule of thumb is 1oz of sugar per gallon of beer but there are calculators out there depending on what you are using for priming sugar. I would stay away from fizz drops as well. I've used them a couple times and for whatever reason the beer came out under carbonated both times. I've had good results with table sugar added directly to the bottling bucket and lightly stirred with a sanitized spoon.

[Scoper50]

I almost forgot! If you choose to batch prime in the future you can't just add the straight sugar to the bottling bucket. You have to dissolve and boil it in water for about 5 minutes, THAN add it to the bottling bucket before you add the beer. Sorry, I don't want to be responsible for mistakes!

[Hayzer]

Four weeks! Yikes. I thought the recipe said seven days. If I need to wait four weeks I'll do just that.

[mashani]

Four weeks! Yikes. I thought the recipe said seven days. If I need to wait four weeks I'll do just that.

You can drink one 7 days in. But if you try one at 7 days and then another one at 3-4 weeks you will know why we say wait 3-4 weeks.

You can get it down to 2 weeks, but it requires pitching a lot of yeast (a lot more then comes with Brew Demon/Mr. Beer kits) and good brewing practices from start to finish, so your beer actually tastes good right out of the fermenter and then conditioning at proper temperatures.

But in general it's best to be patient especially at first.

[Wings_Fan_In_KC]

We're trying to avoid/reduce the acetaldehyde present in homebrew that's not conditioned long enough and gives off a flavor of green apples. It is a compound present during the formation of alcohol and, generally, indicates that your beer is too young and needs more time to condition out. If the beer is less than 4 weeks in the bottle and just doesn't taste right to you, 99% of the time the beer is indeed "green." If you let it ride and try one in another week (or month depending on how strong the off flavors are) you will usually find that your beer now is amazing. That's why most home-brewers will say "never dump a beer" (unless it is truly infected) because most off flavors in the first few weeks are not just byproducts created during fermentation. Given enough time they will mellow or disappear, plus CO2 in solution for a while seems to have the effect of mellowing out the flavors.

I had an Oktoberfest that had severe metallic flavors (due to a screw up I made while dry hopping) and instead of pouring it out I found that mixing it 60% / 40% with a Berry Weiss allowed me to drink it I also recall my very first batch of home brew made with MrBeer and following their "you can have a beer in 2 weeks" BS....it was awful. But then I read about acetaldehyde and tucked the bottles away for 3 more weeks and alladasudden it was drinkable!! One final note that I'll share due to personal experience is the part about putting the bottles in the fridge when you are going to drink them. I routinely put them in the night before and then consume them the next evening but I have found that my beers are BEST if I put them in the fridge for at least a week. That may be just me but I bet others in here have the same experience.

Time is your friend as a home brewer like I said on your intro post. The 4 weeks in the bottle was born from forum members' experimentation where a bottle was tried after a week of room temp conditioning, then 2 weeks, then 3 weeks, then a month, etc. At 4 weeks/+4 weeks most beers are pretty damn good and at 1-2 weeks most beers were found to be "green" or "too young." Wheats and IPAs can be gotten into earlier than Stouts and Porters but it's all what you like for your beer in the end. You won't know that until you do some of your own experimenting.

[Hayzer]

Very good info that I will adhere too. Thanks so much for the help.