Sugar per bottle

Brewing processes and methods. How to brew using extract, partial or all-grain. Tips and tricks.

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stouts
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Sugar per bottle

Post by stouts »

hey guys, i usually pig my beer but i wanna bottle a 6 pack of my next batch and need to know how much sugar to use per 12oz bottle. thanks

jay
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1 tsp

Post by jayhawk »

I would use 1 tsp of corn sugar per bottle. How do you like the pig? What carbonation method do you use for those? Are they relatively low maintenance?
Azorean Brewer
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1 Tsp. might be a wee bit too much

Post by Azorean Brewer »

Jay,

By my calculations and looking at this from strictly a ratio factor, I figure that the standard rule of thumb is 3/4 cup (5 oz. corn sugar or 36 Tsp.) per 5 gallons (640 oz. beer or 53 - 12 oz. bottles) when bottling normally. Thus:

36 (tsp.) / 53 = .68 tsp. per bottle

Or just a little over 1/2 Tsp. per bottle. Jayhawk may be right if he has had that experience before, I have not added sugar to a bottle before.

The other concern that comes to mind is "are you adding any booster sugar to you party pig" if you are subtract that amount from what you are going to add to you bottles.

I am not even going to address possibly contaminating your beer with raw corn sugar, I'll let someone else hit on that as like I said I have no experience here.

When I first started out 12 years ago or so, I didn't pay close attention to the amount of sugar I was adding for priming. I had 4 weaker bottles explode in the closet in my den it took weeks to get the stench of beer gone bad out of the rug, plus I didn't win any points with my wife either.

Good luck, Paul.
xero1
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measuring device

Post by xero1 »

Im only new to this but I went to the local supermarket and for $3.00 Aus bought a mesuring spoon device that gives a constant measure for stubbies 375ml and tallies 750ml, worth checking out
jayhawk
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My mistake

Post by jayhawk »

I screwed up on my calculation on that one, Paul is more accurate.
Gravity Thrills
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I got that beat!

Post by Gravity Thrills »

Count yourself lucky if exploding bottles have only messed up a closet. The two exploding bottle experiences I had in my formative brewer days are worse.

1) I put a bottle of a particularly promising beer up on my fridge once - out of sight out of mind, and I'd have at least one beer out of that batch age a couple of months before it was consumed. Well, it was winter, and I didn't notice that I was putting the beer right under the kitchen hot air vent. After a week or so of unknowing warm conditioning, the bottle gave out and the explosion shot the neck (bottle top dutifully in place) right through the drywall ceiling. Got my first experience at patching drywall for that one.

2) Similar physical conditions, with a more spectacular result. My first homebrewing was done in my college dorm room. A real nightmare, actually - I would borrow up all the hotpots and hot plates on the flor to split up an extract wort volume that barely flirted with the idea of boiling. Well, on one early batch, I had a couple of cases sitting quietly in the closet. The heat again kicked in and my under-attenuated beer soon started bursting bottles. To make matters worsse, shrapnel from one bottle would hit a neighbor, etc., etc., and that caused a chain reaction that did in probably 20 bottles. The kicker was that I was off campus visiting my girlfriend and it was my (non-drinking) roommate that ended up with both the beer shower and the bulk of the cleanup.

I'm just glad I eventually got better at this stuff!
Gravity Thrills
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Prime Tabs?

Post by Gravity Thrills »

For this situation in the future, have you looked into using the "Prime Tabs" that are available at morebeer.com and elsewhere? They're just dextrose pounded into portion-control pellets, and you add 3-5 of them per 12-oz bottle depending on the amount of carbonation you want. I haven't played with these yet, but they seem like a good way to bottle up a small quantity of a batch that is otherwise earmarked for kegging.

Cheers,
Jim
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