cdew4545

Recipes 

My roommate and I made a brown ale a couple weekends ago. It looks like it is going to be a great beer...and even more...its the first beer I've had to use a blow off tube with because it blew the top of my fermenter. Its a five gallon batch like all the others I've done, but my concern is the amount of priming sugar to add when I bottle. Should I use less priming sugar or will it be okay since most of the sugar is probably already fermented anyways? Also, does the very rigourous primary give any indication of ABV content? I picked up a hydrometer when I got my supplies for that beer but it turned out to be a hydrometer for distilled spirits #$@!! so i couldnt use it. Its not a big deal, I'm jsut curious, I always have my body to sense the alcohol content once its all ready anyways.

Chairman Cheyco

Recipes 

The priming sugar volume will stay the same since everything should be fermented out when you go to bottle. This is true for ALL your future batches. The only reason to increase or decrease the amount of priming sugar is if you want more or less carbonation.
Also, a rigorous primary usually only means you used a good, fresh, strong yeast. If it's very busy for a really long time, it means there was a lot of fermenting going on, but unless you measure the volume of gas being produced, you can't gain any useful info from it, and I'm not even sure that would get you anywhere.
Any one got a formula for converting moles of CO2 to ABV?

__________________
Once the wind has been broken, it cannot be fixed.

rewster451

Recipes 

I'm not entirely sure that measuring CO2 would be useful in understanding ABV. I've had relatively low gravity beers just blow up when the ferment first got going, but it petered out right away. The only way I'm aware of to measure ABV is by knowing the gravities. But you could guess if you could figure out about how much fermentable sugar you had in it. Maybe some brew software could tell you that?

__________________
Up next: Big Brew Off competition between me and Kaptain Karma as one team, and my two roommates as another--We'll be brewing Pale Ales with specifications on malts, hops, and total yeild to see who's version is better (and to end up with ten total gallons of great beer).
Also up soon: Belgian Dubbel
Primary: Grampa's Woodshed Apple Smoked Porter
Secondary: Zombiefoot California Common, Chocolate Strong Porter
Drinking: Seamus O'Drunkagan Irish Red, Humble Pie Imperial Stout, Capricorn IPA

SwAMi75

Recipes 

As for the priming sugar, you don't really need to adjust it unless you blew off like a gallon or more. Check your volume at bottling time. If you're at 4 gallons or less, then you might want to cut your sugar back some.

As was stated before, the only way you're going to know your ABV is by calculating it from your OG and FG.

__________________
May you go marching in three-measure time
Dressed up as asses, drunk to the nines
Swing from the rafters, shouting those songs
Gone unsung for far too long