Kegging & Priming Sugar

This is my first post but have been lingering through the forums for some time now. I brewed a batch of high gravity IPA, but only ended up with 3.3 or so gallons by the end of everything. During transferring the beer between fermenters I got a chance to sample it, and found it to be excessively bitter. Also, I will be using a keg for the first time... yeehaw!

So heres my questions:

a.) Can I add corn sugar to the keg AND use force carbonation at the same time?

If i can do this...

b.) How much corn sugar should I use for only 3.2-3.2 gallons of beer?

(I know you can just add priming sugar to the keg, apply a small amount of pressure to seal the top, then let it sit like you do with bottles. I just want to add sugar to decrease the bitterness...)

OR...

c.) Is there something else besides add corn sugar that i can add to decrease the excessive bitter taste? (I love bitter IPA's, but messed this one up)

What would you do?

Thanks!

I would pick one: natural (sugar) carbonation or forced (keg) carbonation. Not both. Keep it simple.

Furthermore, if you ended up with 3.3 gallons, what was your recipe? Did you brew for a 5 gallon recipe? You should have topped off your water to 5 gallons before fermenting.

freakshow10mm said:

I would pick one: natural (sugar) carbonation or forced (keg) carbonation. Not both. Keep it simple.

Furthermore, if you ended up with 3.3 gallons, what was your recipe? Did you brew for a 5 gallon recipe? You should have topped off your water to 5 gallons before fermenting.

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It was my first all-grain beer, and decided to go for a pliny the elder/hop stoopid beer, and used nearly a pound of whole leaf hops (I usually don't use nearly this much, and it was my first time using whole leaf). Anyways I didn't account for how much wort was sucked up from hops, i decided not to top-off because i didn't want to dilute it.

Do you have any ideas on how to counteract the IBU's?

Let it sit. Bitterness fades with time. I had an IPA that I thought was way too bitter and I gave it 3 weeks in the bottle and it was fine. Patience, my friend; are you judging it before you have even kegged it? That's a big no-no.

Adding priming sugar doesn't make it sweeter, and if you do both of those you will probably end up overcarbonating it. Not to mention that ~3 gallons in a keg isn't going to carbonate the same as 5 gallons in a keg with priming sugar because of the headspace difference in there (which I suppose you can counteract by filling it with gas, but that's beside the point).

devilishprune said:

Let it sit. Bitterness fades with time. I had an IPA that I thought was way too bitter and I gave it 3 weeks in the bottle and it was fine. Patience, my friend; are you judging it before you have even kegged it? That's a big no-no.

Adding priming sugar doesn't make it sweeter, and if you do both of those you will probably end up overcarbonating it. Not to mention that ~3 gallons in a keg isn't going to carbonate the same as 5 gallons in a keg with priming sugar because of the headspace difference in there (which I suppose you can counteract by filling it with gas, but that's beside the point).

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Ok, thanks for the advice on the bitter part.

How would i go about carbonating roughly 3 gallons in a 5 gallon corny keg? What would be different kegging this volume?

If you do it with forced CO2 (as in just leaving it in the keg on gas) then it would be exactly the same.

Unless you're more familiar with the ideal gas law and the volume of CO2 produced from fermentation than I am, you may just want to go with force carbing.

Thank you for your advice.

I am going to force-carb without any sugar, and will let it sit for a extra week or so to decrease the bitterness.