Messed up priming sugar turned out to be just right

So a while ago I bottled a beer that I ended up putting about half the priming sugar that I needed to. 3 weeks later, the beer is completely flat. However, a month later it got a small bit of carbonation and another month later it had a great inch head and carbonated taste that was perfect.

So my question was, although I ended up putting half the sugar in, it turned out alright. However, if I would have put in the correct amount of priming sugar, what would have happened? Im asking cause I have another beer getting ready to bottle in a few days and I dont want to explode it. IE after a few weeks, have good carbonation, but after a few months have an explosion.

Well the levels of carbonation are subtle, but noticable if you know what to look for. The only way to know for sure if you are measuring your surgar with a scale.

For example if you were going to carb a pale ale w/2/3rd cup of corn sugar, but eyeballed it to half on accident, odds are you could have put more in than you think. I would recommend getting a decent digital scale and carbing to style.

Read this: How to Brew - By John Palmer - Priming Solutions It's gonna tell you how much sugar to use. You'll need to know exactly how much beer you have, what temp it's going to ferment at, and what style it is. After that it's easy just line a piece of paper up with temp and desired CO2 volume and it tells you how much sugar to use.

At 70 degrees, 5oz sugar produces about 3 volumes of co2, and 2.5 gives you about 2. Or about equal to the difference between your fav hefe and your fav porter. You could probably bottle every beer at half the recommended sugar and still have it eventually carb, just not what you'd want.