how much water for priming sugar?

I am getting ready to bottle a 5 gallon batch of Irish red that is in my secondary. When I transferred from the primary to secondary there was obviously some loss, so now I have more like 4.5 gallons. I was wondering if I could get away with adding some previously boiled water when I add the priming sugar to my bottling bucket. Usually, I would boil a couple cups of water and then dissolve about 5 Oz of priming sugar, cool, add to bottling bucket, and then rack on top. How much extra water can I add when I dissolve the priming sugar? Is there any downside to this?

The downside is that any extra water will dilute the beer... I'd just add what you need for the priming sugar and take the loss. The recipe was formulated to give you certain specs (SG/ABV/IBU) and diluting it will change that. I'd personally rather have 4.5 gallons of the beer I intended than 5 gallons of something watered down. Next time you can add that 0.5 gallon trub loss into the recipe so this won't be a problem!

I've always just pour the sugar into the beer and never had any problems....maybe I've just been lucky?

chris41 said:

I've always just pour the sugar into the beer and never had any problems....maybe I've just been lucky?

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youve just been lucky. sugar is not sanitary and you could infect your beer by throwing it directly in. mixing it with boiling water on the stove isnt just to help it disolve but also to sanitize it.

you can use the smallest amount of water that the sugar will fully dissolve into. usually only need 1 or 2 cups for 5oz of sugar.

audger said:

youve just been lucky. sugar is not sanitary and you could infect your beer by throwing it directly in. mixing it with boiling water on the stove isnt just to help it disolve but also to sanitize it.

you can use the smallest amount of water that the sugar will fully dissolve into. usually only need 1 or 2 cups for 5oz of sugar.

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Will I have any overcarbing problems by using the whole 5 oz of sugar with ~4.5 gallons of beer? I don't have a scale to speperate out the extra 0.5 oz.

zachattack said:

The downside is that any extra water will dilute the beer... I'd just add what you need for the priming sugar and take the loss. The recipe was formulated to give you certain specs (SG/ABV/IBU) and diluting it will change that. I'd personally rather have 4.5 gallons of the beer I intended than 5 gallons of something watered down. Next time you can add that 0.5 gallon trub loss into the recipe so this won't be a problem!

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So you suggest that I next time I start with about 5.5 gallons for a 5 gallon recipe?

kevinb said:

So you suggest that I next time I start with about 5.5 gallons for a 5 gallon recipe?

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No, I'm suggesting that if you want to end up with exactly 5 gallons of beer at the end, you scale up your recipe to start with 5.5 gallons of beer. Adding an extra half gallon of water at the beginning will (mostly) have the same diluting effect as adding it at the end. If you're using kits you can't easily scale up, but if you're making your own recipe it's pretty standard to factor in trub loss. If you use any brewing software usually there's a spot to input this.

kevinb said:

So you suggest that I next time I start with about 5.5 gallons for a 5 gallon recipe?

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If you want 5 gallons of final product, you'll have to start fermentation with a bit more than 5 gallons to cover for the trub loss. If you want the abv to be correct for the recipe you might have to make some adjustments (ie, adding more grain or DME etc etc).

kevinb said:

Will I have any overcarbing problems by using the whole 5 oz of sugar with ~4.5 gallons of beer? I don't have a scale to speperate out the extra 0.5 oz.

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You`re co2 volume with 5oz in 4.5 gal. will be about 3.0.Most styles
average 2.5.You may end up a bit overcarbed.I would take out about
a tlbs. or 2 before bottling.Just my thoughts.

Cheers