priming sugar qty in 12oz vs. 22oz. bottles

Hey homebrewers-

Does the amount of priming sugar used (5oz) change when bottling in 12 oz bottles versus 22oz bottles? A LHBS advised me that 'due to the physics' of the 22oz. bottles less priming sugar would be needed to achieve the same level of carbonation. I find this odd.

I use the same amount since sometimes I bottle both types in the same batch and never had an issue.

Your local LHBS is dumb, you know, due to physics.

While you may have a different ratio of headspace to liquid, the amount of CO2 created needs to be the same per volume of liquid, thus you need the same amount of food for your yeasties.

your LHBS is crazy. The bottle size does not matter. If you add the sugar to the full batch then split into various sized bottles it will all carbonate the same.

I know those that carbing in a keg (1 bottle) with priming sugar add far less than 5oz used for ~50 bottles.

That being said I mix 12 and 22 oz bottles on same batch so I don't worry about it, 5oz is my standard and run with it.

MikeG said:

I know those that carbing in a keg (1 bottle) with priming sugar add far less than 5oz used for ~50 bottles.

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Since when? When I did prime my kegs with sugar I always used the same rate I would for bottles.

maida7 said:

Since when? .

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I reckon the laws of physics must have been updated in late 2009. I overcarbed a couple kegs using the 5 gallon bottling amounts for sugar.

I guess your mileage varied. ??

maida7 said:

Since when? When I did prime my kegs with sugar I always used the same rate I would for bottles.

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I use about 1/2 the amount of priming sugar to prime a keg as I would for bottling. The reason is that there is a large volume of liquid in relation to the small amount of headspace. For a 5 gallon keg, I use approximately 2-2.5 ounces of priming sugar.

That said, for bottles, I wouldn't sweat it at all. The differing amount of headspace in relation to volume in a 22 ounce bottle vs a 12 ounce bottle would be negligible.

maida7 said:

Since when? When I did prime my kegs with sugar I always used the same rate I would for bottles.

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https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/highly-carbonated-beer-keg-priming-sugar-61199/

YooperBrew said:

I use about 1/2 the amount of priming sugar to prime a keg as I would for bottling. The reason is that there is a large volume of liquid in relation to the small amount of headspace. For a 5 gallon keg, I use approximately 2-2.5 ounces of priming sugar.

That said, for bottles, I wouldn't sweat it at all. The differing amount of headspace in relation to volume in a 22 ounce bottle vs a 12 ounce bottle would be negligible.

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https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/how-much-priming-sugar-keg-105601/

You prob have a relief valve on your keg, once it's carbed it'll just escape.

Back to topic, I'd stick with the same volume unless you were doing all 22oz then you might want to adjust.

I have read that 1 - 1.5" of head space for bottling is recommended. But, is this amount of head space different when talking about 22 oz? What about the much bigger 1 liter swing tops?

I have stuck to basically 1.25" of head space for my latest batch and they are basically 90% 1 Liter swing tops. I do use the Grolsh (sp?) beer bottles that are 16 oz. and leave the same amount of head space. I actually just popped one in the fridge after 1.5 weeks at 78-81F and left it in there for 2 days and it was not that bad! I have one of the 1Liter ones sitting in the fridge right now, after 2.5 weeks and Its going to sit in there for another day (4 total) to see how it turns out.

I'm seriously just testing out time frames and so forth. I will be putting the rest of my bottles in tomorrow, and will be leaving them there for a week to allow all the Co2 to be absorbed into the beer, so i can have them ready for Easter

MikeG said:

I know those that carbing in a keg (1 bottle) with priming sugar add far less than 5oz used for ~50 bottles.

That being said I mix 12 and 22 oz bottles on same batch so I don't worry about it, 5oz is my standard and run with it.

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I still use the same amount I'd use in bottles when I keg. FWIW...

I just stumbled across this old thread while looking for a similar topic. There would be a difference in bottling sugar required for different sized bottles... no one was stupid. It's just a question of if the difference is noticable and worth consideration.

I'm a relatively novice brewer, but I'm also a physics teacher. Here's my just-thought-of-this-for-the-first-time response... there could be other factors involved, from pure theory the amount of air space relative to liquid would affect the pressure levels, because before the liquid absorbs CO2 it would first off-gas into the airspace, and the airspace would have to pressurize as well as the gas. For talking purposes, say this is 12psi. Air compresses but liquid does not, so the more airspace to pressurize to 12psi the more CO2 would be necessary, which means more sugar.

Think of it in extreme examples, and say that you wanted 12psi in your vessel to carbonate your liquid beer. Imagine a bottle-worth of uncarbonated beer poured into a keg... how much CO2 would need to be produced by that amount of liquid to pressurize the entire keg enough to carbonate that amount of beer? That's a lot of air that would have to be compressed, so it would take a ton of sugar! (and more liquid, etc... this is not a realistic example, it's to discuss extremes to visualize the concept).

Now imagine that the keg were filled up so that there were only a tiny bubble of air on top... not much CO2 would be required to compress that tiny bubble and generate 12psi, therefore less sugar would be required.

These are extreme examples, but you can see that it could apply to a keg vs. bottling, or even bottling a 22oz vs. a 12oz. I don't know how critical this would be, and imagine that it's negligible, whereas with a keg the rule of thumb is 1/2 the sugar necessary for bottles (about 2oz per keg vs. 4oz for bottles).

If you try both methods, please post the results! A simple way to test, and something that I've already done without realizing it, is to use your normal sugar amount and bottle mostly 22oz with a few 12oz's. Carbonate, then open side-by-side to look for a difference. From memory, I didn't notice a difference.