Need Help With Priming Sugar Style

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American Wheat Ale. Should need about 3.6 oz of table sugar to prime 5 gallons, I just bottled an AWA 2 weeks ago, going to try one tonight and see how the carbonation is coming along.
 
Wow, that wasn't fun. Little pieces of raspberry clogged my bottling wand. I've read that you should use a hop bag around the autosiphon, but chose to ignore that idea...wrong move.

For the future, when you wrap the hop bag around the autosiphon, how do you do it? With a twist-tie? Do you use a rubber band? Sanitized obviously...
 
I use my grain bag which is large enough that only part of the bag goes into the fermenter but I had thought of using a smaller hop bag with sanitized rubber band and don't see any reason why that wouldn't work well.
 
It's too late now, but I really dislike those priming calculators because they simply aren't correct. Carbing "to style" sounds great in theory, but usually ends up with over carbed bottled beers, or undercarbed flat beers. It's true that some British styles served on cask ARE flat, but bottled beer generally shouldn't be.

I typically use 5 ounces (by weight) of priming sugar for 5 gallons of beer for almost all styles. For something I want a little lower carbed, I will use 4 ounces of priming sugar, but never less.

Using that calculator, carbing a Bavarian dunkelweizen will cause bottle bombs. And carbing a Northern English brown will give you flat beer. Both would be ridiculous.
 
Wow, that wasn't fun. Little pieces of raspberry clogged my bottling wand. I've read that you should use a hop bag around the autosiphon, but chose to ignore that idea...wrong move.

For the future, when you wrap the hop bag around the autosiphon, how do you do it? With a twist-tie? Do you use a rubber band? Sanitized obviously...

Did you rack to a "bottling bucket"?

If not, racking to a bottling bucket will allow you to easily "bulk prime" your beer and racking your beer onto the priming sugar solution can mix the beer or you can gently stir the beer before you bottle!

Bulk priming can help your beers to be consistantly carbonated! Another benefit is by racking to a bottling bucket you can siphon the beer off of most of the trub at the bottom of your fermentor.
 
It's too late now, but I really dislike those priming calculators because they simply aren't correct. Carbing "to style" sounds great in theory, but usually ends up with over carbed bottled beers, or undercarbed flat beers. It's true that some British styles served on cask ARE flat, but bottled beer generally shouldn't be.

I typically use 5 ounces (by weight) of priming sugar for 5 gallons of beer for almost all styles. For something I want a little lower carbed, I will use 4 ounces of priming sugar, but never less.

Using that calculator, carbing a Bavarian dunkelweizen will cause bottle bombs. And carbing a Northern English brown will give you flat beer. Both would be ridiculous.

What have you found is the best way to determine priming sugar? Are you basing it on FG? ABV? Seems most beers do fine with 3-5oz of sugar in 5 gallons.
 
What have you found is the best way to determine priming sugar? Are you basing it on FG? ABV? Seems most beers do fine with 3-5oz of sugar in 5 gallons.

What am I basing it on? Just preference to have a carb level similar to most commercial beers. Even English beers that are bottled aren't flat, while cask ales certainly have a very low carb level. Priming a weizen to 4.5 volumes of co2 may create gushers or even bottle bombs.

A small variation in carb levels is fine for me. I normally prime a dry stout with 4 ounces while an American IPA may get 5 ounces. But going higher or lower has never worked out for me.
 
It's too late now, but I really dislike those priming calculators because they simply aren't correct. Carbing "to style" sounds great in theory, but usually ends up with over carbed bottled beers, or undercarbed flat beers. It's true that some British styles served on cask ARE flat, but bottled beer generally shouldn't be.

I typically use 5 ounces (by weight) of priming sugar for 5 gallons of beer for almost all styles. For something I want a little lower carbed, I will use 4 ounces of priming sugar, but never less.

Using that calculator, carbing a Bavarian dunkelweizen will cause bottle bombs. And carbing a Northern English brown will give you flat beer. Both would be ridiculous.

I try to carb to style, and I know the temperature function in those is important if you don't degass. That said, a bitter I just made should have been carbed to .75 volumes, and that required .1 oz for a 2 gallon batch at my ferm temps. I bumped it up to 1.75, which required 1 oz. Just take the calculator with a grain of salt, and if you want easy, just do everything to 2.25 volumes or so.
 
What am I basing it on? Just preference to have a carb level similar to most commercial beers. Even English beers that are bottled aren't flat, while cask ales certainly have a very low carb level. Priming a weizen to 4.5 volumes of co2 may create gushers or even bottle bombs.

A small variation in carb levels is fine for me. I normally prime a dry stout with 4 ounces while an American IPA may get 5 ounces. But going higher or lower has never worked out for me.

Oh ok, it sounded like you were saying that the same weight of priming sugar might create gushers in one style but leave another style flat.

I'm a bit worried about my IPA now...I just bottled it Sunday night using only 3.0 oz of table sugar in 4.7 gallons of beer.
 
It's too late now, but I really dislike those priming calculators because they simply aren't correct. Carbing "to style" sounds great in theory, but usually ends up with over carbed bottled beers, or undercarbed flat beers. It's true that some British styles served on cask ARE flat, but bottled beer generally shouldn't be.

I typically use 5 ounces (by weight) of priming sugar for 5 gallons of beer for almost all styles. For something I want a little lower carbed, I will use 4 ounces of priming sugar, but never less.

Using that calculator, carbing a Bavarian dunkelweizen will cause bottle bombs. And carbing a Northern English brown will give you flat beer. Both would be ridiculous.

Yooper, while I can understand that, here's a concern I have about my process. Since I'm only doing 1-gallon batches, let's say that I'd use 1 ounce of priming sugar for all of my beers (just as you use 5 oz for 5 gallons). I feel like, because I'm working with a smaller sample, if I have "too much" priming sugar, It'll be a much bigger difference in a 1-gallon batch vs a 5-gallon batch...Almost no room for error, ya know?
 
Oh ok, it sounded like you were saying that the same weight of priming sugar might create gushers in one style but leave another style flat.

I'm a bit worried about my IPA now...I just bottled it Sunday night using only 3.0 oz of table sugar in 4.7 gallons of beer.

It might end up low carbed, but it won't be flat. But my frustration is with those calculators- telling you to prime a weizen to 4.5 volumes for example. I'm not sure that beer bottles that we use are rated past 4 volumes- and it would be so carbed up I'm not sure how you'd pour it! It may be "to style" but it you're not kegging it I wouldn't do it!

Yooper, while I can understand that, here's a concern I have about my process. Since I'm only doing 1-gallon batches, let's say that I'd use 1 ounce of priming sugar for all of my beers (just as you use 5 oz for 5 gallons). I feel like, because I'm working with a smaller sample, if I have "too much" priming sugar, It'll be a much bigger difference in a 1-gallon batch vs a 5-gallon batch...Almost no room for error, ya know?

I see what you're saying. But 1 ounce per gallon is one ounce per gallon, whether you have 1 gallon or 10 gallons. It should be mixed in well, so it should be exactly the same. I would worry if the scale I had only weighed in two ounce increments, but otherwise I'd still go with .75 ounce for lower carbed beers and 1 ounce for "regular" carbed beers.
 
Is it safe to just aim for 2.0 - 2.5 volumes with most styles if you bottle? I tend to aim for about 2.25 volumes and never had a gusher or a flat beer yet.
 
Is it safe to just aim for 2.0 - 2.5 volumes with most styles if you bottle? I tend to aim for about 2.25 volumes and never had a gusher or a flat beer yet.

That would be safe- but then the priming calculators have temperature in there also to help guestimate the amount of residual C02. If you use it, but you actually fermented the beer at 66 instead of 72 and used "72" as the temperature, it's still not going to be correct. Or vice versa. Like I said, I know people use them but there are some "heads up" things to be aware of when using them.

I like most of my beers pretty well carbed- at 2.4-2.7 (with using the .75- 1 ounce per gallon amounts). But if you like yours less so, that would be fine.
 
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