Accidentally my priming sugar

Hello everyone,

I'm brewing a batch of LME witbeer and accidentally put in my 3/4 cup of priming sugar at the end of the boil instead of prior to bottling. I realize this will likely increase my alcohol content slightly, however is it going to affect the taste much? Also, is there a way to tell how much more corn sugar I'll need to re-add at the proper time (prior to bottling). I have a hydrometer, but not sure how to use it for this purpose.

Thanks much,
~Admiral

i use about 2/3rds of a cup for bottling.
3/4 of a cup shouldn't leave any flavors at all that i can think of, and it will prolly barely add any alcohol with that low of a volume. just a tad though.
Thats one of the easiest non hurting noob mistakes i've seen so far

Thanks much for the reply. Looking forward to this batch!

Don't worry about that sugar it won't affect the beer much.

To prime for bottling it is better to use an amount of sugar, measured by weight and not volume, that is appropriate to the style of beer and the fermentation temperature, as well as the actual volume of beer you're priming. I personally think 3/4 cup ends up being way too much for most styles for a 5 gallon batch. What kind of beer are you making?

Also you don't have to go get more "priming" sugar. Regular table sugar will work just as well.

Just use 1/2 to 34/ cup table sugar.

B

tastybrew.com has a great priming calculator that will calculate how much priming sugar for each beer style.

weirdboy said:

Also you don't have to go get more "priming" sugar. Regular table sugar will work just as well.

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I've been told regular sugar leaves a cidery flavor, but now that I think about it it probably doesn't matter given the small amount used for bottling, right?

Considering your speaking of adding priming sugar to boil, I'll assume you just put into fermenter. Which means you have plenty of time to track down and get some corn sugar. From my understanding table sugar will work with a slight if any off taste that will be noticeable. One other of the problems using table sugar is, your yeast has already had a work out consuming sugars in fermenter. That being said the are slighty tired. Corn sugar is more easily consumable for the yeast which to me means that your brew will carb up lil quicker. To most new comers I know it's hard to wait for bottle conditioning. So using corn sugar may shave a few days off the wait. Just my 2 cents
good luck,
Pete

I accidentally my priming sugar once... couldn't sit down for a week!

Peterock said:

From my understanding table sugar will work with a slight if any off taste that will be noticeable. One other of the problems using table sugar is, your yeast has already had a work out consuming sugars in fermenter. That being said the are slighty tired. Corn sugar is more easily consumable for the yeast which to me means that your brew will carb up lil quicker. To most new comers I know it's hard to wait for bottle conditioning. So using corn sugar may shave a few days off the wait. Just my 2 cents
good luck,
Pete

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Where do you get all this terrible information? None of these things you say are true. You are not helping by spreading false information.

I always my priming sugar on purpose - different strokes I guess.

monkeydan said:

I accidentally my priming sugar once... couldn't sit down for a week!

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You accidentally all the priming sugar? I was waiting for someone to say something like that.

Look I'm not trying to turn this into a chemistry thread. Table sugar is a Sucrose which is 1 glucose + 1 fructose molecule which then must be hydrolyzed (split) with water to ferment. With alcohol in the brew who knows the effect it has on the conversion. Corn sugar is less complex. I did a lot of reading on this already as I was looking for a good answer. There are number of carbon atoms per monosaccharide molecule etc,etc. There are a lot of variables involved. All and all the conclusion I came up with was that corn sugar is the better bet. IMO

Peterock said:

Look I'm not trying to turn this into a chemistry thread. Table sugar is a Sucrose which is 1 glucose + 1 fructose molecule which then must be hydrolyzed (split) with water to ferment. With alcohol in the brew who knows the effect it has on the conversion. Corn sugar is less complex. I did a lot of reading on this already as I was looking for a good answer. There are number of carbon atoms per monosaccharide molecule etc,etc. There are a lot of variables involved. All and all the conclusion I came up with was that corn sugar is the better bet. IMO

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Sucrose is the organic compound commonly known as table sugar. The molecule is a disaccharide composed of glucose and fructose with the molecular formula C12H22O11.

Dextrose is glucose a monosaccharide, C6H1206.

They are different, but not enough to make a bit of difference at all in fermentation. Yeast readily digest fructose, just as easily as glucose.

Ah. So the cidery thing is not true?

Cap'n Jewbeard said:

Ah. So the cidery thing is not true?

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Not when you are talking about less than 3% of the fermenatables (priming sugar).

And wow, Pete's post is the most absurd thing I have ever read haha

Yooper said:

Sucrose is the organic compound commonly known as table sugar. The molecule is a disaccharide composed of glucose and fructose with the molecular formula C12H22O11.

Dextrose is glucose a monosaccharide, C6H1206.

They are different, but not enough to make a bit of difference at all in fermentation. Yeast readily digest fructose, just as easily as glucose.

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What Peterock is alluding to is the fact that the yeast must enzymatically cleave the sucrose into separate parts before even having the opportunity to consume the glucose OR fructose, which is true. I doubt skipping this step would shave off an hour, much less days, but this I can't honestly say for 100% certain.

Germelli1 said:

Not when you are talking about less than 3% of the fermenatables (priming sugar).

And wow, Pete's post is the most absurd thing I have ever read haha

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Absurd?? Come on. how?
I'm not trying to make waves here.

I will bet you $100 you cannot tell the difference between beer primed with table sugar vs corn sugar, apart from *maybe* performing some kind of chemical analysis.

Peterock said:

Absurd?? Come on. how?
I'm not trying to make waves here.

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Yeast don't work with ever fiber in their being to get to our final gravities. It is not like they push through extreme fatigue just to chew through those few points, then die of exhaustion upon reaching final gravity. If they did, every beer would be insanely phenolic, estery and full of many other off-flavors. It would be the furthest extreme from the clean tasting beverages we know today.

As long as you aren't fermenting 15-20+ degrees above (or below) the yeast strain's optimal range, and not pushing ABV over 12%, then there is no reason the yeast would be "tired". You pitch them into the beer, they work efficiently consuming all available resources, then when they run out they go dormant. Add more resources for them, they will wake up and consume them, then do back to dormancy. How else would breweries, both commercial and hobby level, be able to reuse yeast for many generations if after one batch they were too exhausted to even eat table sugar?

To suggest that yeast are too stressed (what I assume the intended connotation of "tired" to be) to eat one of the simplest sugars available for brewing but are fine to eat another of the simplest sugars out there is absurd.

I can't argue that they may carb faster (although I doubt you would ever notice a difference). You are supposed to condition the beer in bottles for a period anyway, so it is a moot point.