Priming sugar.

I wonder if I am using too much priming sugar. For a 5 gallon batch I am using 5oz of sugar to prime. First of all, and this may seem stupid but are we talking 5oz of weight? Using the metric system I was not aware that oz. was weight because I have this paper that shows how to convert oz. to cups. It seems to me that this would not work, converting weight to volume...Secondly is 5oz. too much? All my beers have this bitter flavour that tastes like it might be this, and it can't be too much hops because I just tried my porter beer which has half the hops of some other beers I've made and it still has that same flavour.

Generally any dry measure will be in cups, liquid measures in ounces or pounds unless they specify different in directions (hops excepted). If you had too much sugar, I would expect a cidery flavor. But with bitterness something else is likely. With any luck that taste will mellow with more aging. Time often clears up such problems.

5oz = 141.75 Grams

Use this:
http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/priming.html

Pick your general style from the pop up, the the amount in US gallons you are bottling then enter the avg temp your beer Fermented at (drop down for celcius) and it will give you the weights for Corn sugar (glucose/dextrose) and cane sugar etc.

Use this or some toher converter to convert from oz to grams, though hopefully your scale will have both.
1oz = 28.35 grams
http://www.springfrog.com/converter/weight.htm

According to your measuring thing on the "tasty brew" website, I've been using almost double the priming sugar I should be. Cool site, thanks.

we always used/recomended 3/4 cup priming sugar or DME for bottling.

I usually do ~3.5oz when I use corn sugar 'cause that's how I like it. 5oz might be appropriate for a hefe, but it'd be quite a lot for most other styles. I go by weight since I have a cool digital scale

3/4 cup corn sugar weighs about 4 oz.

5oz by Volume is close to 3/4 cup (6oz) so you were probably ok.

of course thats US fluid ounces. Imperial are bigger.
Both are the same by weight. Confused yet?

BTW what is the historical reason the US went with smaller ounces/gallons???

Denny's Brew said:

BTW what is the historical reason the US went with smaller ounces/gallons???

Click to expand...

See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallon

That'll confuse the hell out of ya! (It did me)