How much air to leave in the bottle?

Hey all! I just finished my first batch in 10 years or so. An American Wheat that turned out pretty well.

I was wondering how much air to leave in the bottle and how it affects the carbonation?

I experimented and filled some all the way up, and varied it down to about an inch of airspace in a 12 oz bottle.

I also bottle primed. I did 1/2 tsp per bottle in half, and 3/4 tsp in the other half. I've been told that the bottles with 3/4's tsp may be in danger of blowing up? What do you think? The final gravity was 1.014

Thanks
Eric

First, welcome to the forums. Lots of good info in here.

Do you have a bottling wand? If so, just fill the bottle until it's full. When you take the wand out, there will be the right amount of head space. You should end up with about 3/4 of an inch of head space.

As for priming, the recommendation in 3/4 cup (4 ounces) of corn sugar (dextrose) per 5 gallons. I dunno how that breaks down to bottles, but thats what is the rule of thumb.

With the wand it ends up being about an inch of head space.

bout an inch and yeah, bottling wand FTW. look at your commercial bottles. usually about the same deal.

i have a friend that recently screwed up and filled them only to the neck. they were undercarbonated (but were still pretty good)

3/4 to 1.5 inches.

You should rack you beer to your bottling bucket, add the sugar (dissolved in water), then stir. Then bottle the beer. This will allow an even mix of the sugar and is way easier consistent than adding to each bottle separately.

3/4 cup is an old standby, but depending on the style of beer you may want more or less co2 volumes in your beer. There are calculators for determining this.

Denny's Evil Concoctions said:

3/4 cup is an old standby, but depending on the style of beer you may want more or less co2 volumes in your beer. There are calculators for determining this.

Click to expand...

also depends on what you use to carbonate, too 3/4 cup is the general consensus for corn sugar, i believe.

Be careful of the ones you filled all the way up.
If you filled right to the top of the bottle they could go boom..

Actually to small a head space could result in a fairly flat beer. A big headspace will develop more pressure.

It's best to go by weight rather than by cups. In that case both sugars are about he same.

Thanks guys!

i second the suggestion to go by mass rather than volume. much more accurate. and make sure to mix it in well, otherwise you may have uneven carbonation.

I think its 1/4tsp of corn sugar per bottle. you may end up with some rather carbonated beer.

just remember the only 'bad' mistakes are the ones you don't learn from. 3/4 cup corn sugar (general guideline) for the entire 5gallons of beer. boil it in like 2 cups of water, cool, then put it in your bottling bucket. rack the fermented beer onto the sugar water, and let the natural swirling action of filling bucket do your mixing. you CAN stir it as long as you do it slowly as to not splash the beer at all (and spoon is sanitized well).

Thanks for the replies guys.

I tried putting the sugar into the individual bottles as this is what one of the homebrew store owners suggested.

His reasons were: ease due to not having to boil sugar, clean and sterilize the bottling bucket, and the foam that the beer created with the sugar in the bottle kept the oxygen off of your newly bottled beer.

I should do a batch half sugar in the bottle, and half boil and rack to see if there is a difference.

Thanks again.