So my stupid ass threw away the priming sugar before bottling

Yea. I had a buddy over, showing him how to brew/bottle beer. Today was bottling day, so we were having beers, and cleaning/sanitizing. I had boiled the sugar, and he threw it in the fridge to cool down. After we were done sanitizing, I told him to put the sugar in the bottling bucket, so he pulled it out, and threw it in the bottling bucket. As I was preparing the siphon to the new auto siphon I bought, I noticed some of the hot water I was using to get the 1/2" tubing to attach to the auto siphon was pouring into the bottling bucket. So I got the tubing ready, and didn't want any contamination in the bottling bucket, so I threw away the priming sugar/hot water into the sink. Not even realizing it, he says "So what's the point of the sugar?"

FML
I had no malt extract, no corn sugar, and the brew n grow in Chicago was closed. I transferred all of the beer to the bottling bucket, and cleaned and sanitized the fermenting buckets lid, and sealed the bucket again. Gotta go back, get sugar tomorrow, and stir it into the concoction. I have 60 bottles up on my counter that are cleaned/sanitized that are covered in towels, and going to be star stanned in the morning again

Sorry to hear about the waste! You could always use regular table sugar, if you still want to bottle tonight. Prepare it the same way as corn sugar, boil it in water and rack the beer onto it.

shawnbou said:

Sorry to hear about the waste! You could always use regular table sugar, if you still want to bottle tonight. Prepare it the same way as corn sugar, boil it in water and rack the beer onto it.

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Prepare the same way as corn sugar, but use 2/3 of a cup. After my second batch, I never used corn sugar again to prime bottles. Table sugar every time. Corn sugar is a completely non-essential ingredient that the shops try to push on beginners.

they usually have dextrose in the natural food stores as well. Its also generally cheaper, than at the LHBS.

I think I am gonna just use table sugar for the Belgian... I didn't buy an sugar & I have seen good reviews on table sugar...

Blah, I googled "alternates to corn sugar" and google redirected me to here, and some other sites, saying corn sugar is essential, or to use malt extract.

Oh well, I transferred into a sanitized bucket, and it's sealed right now, and we'll pretend it's in a "secondary fermenter" now, but it's just not sitting on yeast or anything. I'll buy the sugar in the morning to bottle, 18 hours after the transfer. Hopefully it doesn't ruin anything

If everything was sanitized you'll be fine. At the local food coop they have jars of barley syrup, and probably every health food store does too, and probably supermarkets. That is basically LME and could be used as well. You could brew an entire batch using that.

Maybe someone can taste the difference between bottling with table sugar vs corn sugar, but it sure isn't me.

atooraya said:

Blah, I googled "alternates to corn sugar" and google redirected me to here, and some other sites, saying corn sugar is essential, or to use malt extract.

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Corn sugar is most certainly NOT essential. In fact, most priming calculators include options for table sugar. I've read numerous sources both here and elsewhere which say that table sugar is just fine.

http://tastybrew.com/calculators/priming.html

http://www.northernbrewer.com/priming-sugar-calculator/

I have used both corn and table sugar, and I have to agree - I can't tell the difference.

Both of them are 100% fermentable, so it's not like anything is left over.

Table sugar all day, period.

I just ended up making dinner with friends and we all got drunk and passed out.

Too bad I didn't come back and read this thread. I ran over to the brew place and bought a pack of sugar for $.75. Gonna bottle it up today. Boiling it into a simple syrup now, then gonna slowly mix it into the bottling bucket without aerating it too much :/

No need to cool it much, either. I usually boil it and let is sit while I'm getting ready. Then I rack about a gallon of beer into a carboy, jam the funnel into the hole and pour the syrup in.

Don’t worry about cooling it. The small volume of hot sugar water will barely affect the temperature of the 5G of wort that you’re going to siphon on top of it. Plus, sticking it in the fridge and having it pass through the temperature danger zone just gives you another opportunity for undesirable microbes.

soundsandsuds said:

Don’t worry about cooling it. The small volume of hot sugar water will barely affect the temperature of the 5G of wort that you’re going to siphon on top of it. Plus, sticking it in the fridge and having it pass through the temperature danger zone just gives you another opportunity for undesirable microbes.

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This is good advice.

WOW, I seem to not be able to do anything right. This is my 3rd batch, and the instructions on the kit told me to cool it. Oh well, I just put it in an ice bath in the freezer for about 10 minutes.

I always cool it down in the fridge and dont have any issues. It's been said multiple times here over the years, more than one way to skin a cat, and its very difficult to infect beer. Precautions are definitely good, but I look at a lot of the rules as guidelines. Sanitation is the most important part of brewing, but to be honest, your bottles will be exposed to nasties longer than your sugar will.

Corn sugar is straight dextrose/glucose (same thing sort of), table sugar requires an additional enzyme to break it into a glucose and a dextrose. But there is so little being fermented in bottle conditioning that it's not worth losing any sleep over. It works the same. So does honey, fwiw.

though i hear that corn syrup has preservatives in it? I know it's been years since i saw a corn syrup that wasn't spiked with vanillin.