Priming sugar for 3 gallons

Hey all,

I recently bottled a 3 gallon batch of IPA and used a half cup of corn sugar to prime. I know the ratio is 3/4 cup of corn sugar per 5 gallons, so I just guesstimated (I really should know better than to do that by now). I tried using priming sugar calculators, but they're each telling me to use 1.9 ounces of corn sugar based on my style, which - according to Google - is about a 1/4 cup. My question is... Is this going to work? Also, are there any calculators that just tell you how many cups of sugar to add to the bottling bucket, instead of ounces?

By the by, I got that 3/4 cup ratio from http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter11-4.html

It's hard to use "cups" because some sugar is more finely granulated, and my cup measurement may be very different than yours. A small cheap kitchen scale is almost a necessity for brewing, for measuring priming sugar as well as hops.

I don't use the priming calculators very often as they are actually not that great at guestimating the amount to use since they try to take residual carbonation into consideration based on temperature. 1.9 ounces of sugar is NOT enough for a 3 gallon batch of IPA- more like 3 ounces would be better. I don't know how much that is in "cups", though- maybe 1/2 cup?

I used 1/2 cup of corn sugar although 3 ounces is about 0.375 cups. That's interesting about the scale... I'll have to remember that for when I get more equipment down the road. Even if I had a scale though, these priming calcs are still going to say a lower amount. Is there a more accurate way to determine how much sugar to use?

uberlad said:

Is there a more accurate way to determine how much sugar to use?

Click to expand...

An once a gallon seems to work all the time.
You NEED a scale.

amandabab said:

An once a gallon seems to work all the time.
You NEED a scale.

Click to expand...

Gotcha. Done and done. Thanks for the feedback!

This is an old thread, but by some chance someone catches this by tomorrow morning, I have run into a similar problem using the calculators. Yet when I scaled the amount of priming sugar down from the amount for a 5 gallon batch to a 3 gallon batch, I had some explosions occur. Though this may have been due to a number of other reasons. Any thoughts?

Just in case you haven't seen this, There's also the calculators over at the Screwy Brewer website.

For your 3G recipe with a CO2 volume of 2.5, the recommended amount of priming sugar would be 2.5-2.6 oz.