does anyone not boil priming water/sugar?

[domdom]

I caught myself wondering how necessary it is to boil the water you mix with your priming sugar. i'd think that a fully fermented beer, even one that's only 4-5%, wouldn't have any adverse affects of adding non-boiled sugar and water. i'd even try just using bottled water while i was at it.

 

[CU_tony]

I always boil my water before adding the priming sugar. While beer is pretty determined to become its final product, the art of beer making revolves around eliminating risks (primarily for contamination).
Can you make a decent batch of beer mixing bottled water and corn sugar, sure, 9/10 times, probably even closer to 99/100.
However, if you boil the water then dissolve priming sugar and cool, you will be mitigating one point of failure in the beer making process.

 

[kh54s10]

I get the priming solution to a boil but then take it off the heat. I have read that 180F or so will pretty much do the trick, some say you need to boil for 15 minutes. I think that if you get to boiling that is enough.

I personally would not risk a batch hoping that the alcohol level of the beer would be enough to kill any contaminates.

 

[meatcleaver]

I say why risk it? it literally takes like 5 minutes

 

[AkTom]

I'm with you. I just use hot water from the tap (well water), add sugar, dump in bottling bucket, rack on top, gentle stir when I remember. Then the hard part... Wait 2 weeks.
Brew on and don't bother with boiling your priming water.
Uncle Tom

 

[domdom]

i've heard the big concern/reason for boiling 15 minutes is lactobacillic. i've only gotten it once in a beer and it was a cream ale that if found a 6 pack of that was a year old after a move.

 

[FatDragon]

I've tried a few methods and boiling is the best for me.

I used to boil water in an electric kettle and mix it with the sugar at or near boiling temperatures. No infections but poor consistency in priming even if I gave the bottling bucket the occasional light stir to swirl the priming sugar back into an even solution.

I tried measuring dry sugar directly into my bottles and priming with that. Got a lot of infected bottles in that batch. I've done single bottles for various reasons using this method and then pouring a little bit of boiling water in with the sugar to sanitize it and I haven't infected a bottle like that yet, but it's not optimal for bottling a full batch.

I've primed by injecting boiled priming solution directly into bottles with a syringe. Too much hassle.

In the end, I found (in keeping with advice I received here) that letting my priming sugar boil for a minute or two seems to give me a better solution than mixing with boiling water, and combined with a light stir with a sanitized implement every 4-6 bottles I get even carbonation across the batch and no infected bottles.

I can see how boiling your priming solution might seem like a pain because you don't want to rack your beer onto hot sugar water, but I've found that racking onto hot priming sugar doesn't cause any problems (since there's so little of it compared to the volume of the beer) so in the end it adds about three minutes to my bottling day in return for eliminating a signficant contamination vector. Sounds good to me.

 

[WI_Wino]

I don't boil, just hot water from the tap. I have a couple RIS that are ~8%, 1 and 2 year old, neither is showing any signs of infection.

 

[Qhrumphf]

Normally I do. I start it boiling while sanitizing everything else, give it 5-10 minutes, and then chill.

The one thing that hasn't been brought up is chemical inversion when using sucrose (table sugar, brown sugar, turbinado sugar, etc). While it happens far more slowly under just heat as opposed to heat AND acid as inversion is normally done, the boiling process should partially break down sucrose (a disaccharide) into smaller monosaccharides (glucose and fructose, IIRC), which are more easily taken up by yeast. I'm sure the impact is essentially negligible, but something to be aware of. Although dextrose (corn sugar) I believe is in itself a monosaccharide.

In any event, the one time where I don't bother boiling the sugar is when I rack into pins for cask, because I normally use smaller polypins, and it's easiest to just directly add the amount of sugar by weight that I need to the pin along with my isinglass finings, and then rack on top of it. While there's definitely a contamination risk in doing so, I haven't noticed one, and the beer is always gone faster than one could present anyway (usually within a few days of being carbonated).

 

[55x11]

I caught myself wondering how necessary it is to boil the water you mix with your priming sugar. i'd think that a fully fermented beer, even one that's only 4-5%, wouldn't have any adverse affects of adding non-boiled sugar and water. i'd even try just using bottled water while i was at it.

I used to do it but don't anymore. Once the sugar solution boiled over and caramelized sugar was a PITA to clean off the stove surface - took me hours of scrubbing, no more.

You are adding sugar to a high alcohol, low pH beer liquid with plenty of active yeast. Chances of infection at this stage are very slim in my opinion.

I also don't boil large sugar additions (to belgian beers etc.), I don't boil fruit (you can make nice jam that way though), I don't boil oak etc. I just add it.

But if it makes some people sleep better at night, sure, go ahead and do it - boil away. Boil everything - just make sure it doesn't boil over.

 

[Qhrumphf]

I don't boil fruit

Are you using fresh or pasteurized fruit? Fresh fruit is loaded with wild yeast that absolutely can survive and thrive in beer. Great if you want to introduce wild organisms into a sour. Not so great in a "clean" beer. Frozen stuff is all pasteurized, and canned stuff is more than likely sterile, and in that case, agreed, I don't bother doing anything with it, just add it and rack on top.

 

[FatDragon]

I used to do it but don't anymore. Once the sugar solution boiled over and caramelized sugar was a PITA to clean off the stove surface - took me hours of scrubbing, no more.

In my experience, all you need to do is pour a bit of boiling water on it and it dissolves forthright, then it's just a matter of wiping it up. Every burnt sugar mess I've dealt with in a pot or on the stove has cleaned up easily with boiling water. I forgot a priming sugar solution on the stove early in my brewing career and ended up dry-firing the pot so badly it warped irreversibly and the sugar was just char on the bottom and walls of the pot. The sugar came off tootsweet with boiling water, although the pot's still crooked a couple years later.

 

[KangerBrew6]

I pressure-can priming solution in advance as I do with starter wort. You know it makes sense.

 

[55x11]

Are you using fresh or pasteurized fruit? Fresh fruit is loaded with wild yeast that absolutely can survive and thrive in beer. Great if you want to introduce wild organisms into a sour. Not so great in a "clean" beer. Frozen stuff is all pasteurized, and canned stuff is more than likely sterile, and in that case, agreed, I don't bother doing anything with it, just add it and rack on top.

I freeze fruit, and then just soak it in starsan for a few minutes when thawing. I know a lot of people swear by boiling or at least semi-pasteurizing the fruit (heating it up but not boiling) - I avoid boiling because of pectin release.

There may be still some bacteria and wild yeast that survives the freeze/starsan soak (if they live on the inside of the fruit somewhere) but I have never had problems - and I think the low pH, high alcohol and small amounts of sugars present at the end of fermentation make it rather difficult for them to survive.

 

[Stillraining]

I caught myself wondering how necessary it is to boil the water you mix with your priming sugar. i'd think that a fully fermented beer, even one that's only 4-5%, wouldn't have any adverse affects of adding non-boiled sugar and water. i'd even try just using bottled water while i was at it.

I dont...

I NUKE 2 cups tap water for 3 min ...that brings it up to 195 in my mico-wave then I stir in sugar...good enough for me and never had an infection. Simple and fast.

 

[phug]

i keep an old electric kettle in/near my brewery. I fire that up, and pour the boiled water onto my sugar to get it to dissolve, and then pour straight into the bottom of the bottling bucket and rack onto it.

 

[Qhrumphf]

I freeze fruit, and then just soak it in starsan for a few minutes when thawing. I know a lot of people swear by boiling or at least semi-pasteurizing the fruit (heating it up but not boiling) - I avoid boiling because of pectin release.

There may be still some bacteria and wild yeast that survives the freeze/starsan soak (if they live on the inside of the fruit somewhere) but I have never had problems - and I think the low pH, high alcohol and small amounts of sugars present at the end of fermentation make it rather difficult for them to survive.

Freezing will kill most, star san the rest I would think. Any that survive, yeah probably too inhospitable. I was thinking you were just adding straight fresh fruit. I do that in my sours, but only in my sours. Otherwise I usually just use frozen fruit as is. But I don't make many fruit beers (very rarely aside from sours).

 

[Aristotelian]

I think the reason to boil is to dissolve the sugar fully so that you are guaranteed to get an even distribution in the bottling vessel.

I use sugar cubes without boiling to the same effect. No infections in 3 batches.

 

[FloppyKnockers]

I generally have 4 - 7 bottles worth of beer after filling the keg. I add 3/4 tsp of table sugar per bottle for priming. Never boiled it... never had a problem.

 

[JohnSand]

Plenty of brewers bottle prime with sugar cubes or granules. No boiling and no problems. I still have bottle primed beers over two years old, no problems. I keg now with CO2, but If I keg prime with sugar, I might just measure it into the empty keg and rack on top of it.

 

[yeastylad]

Obligatory "start kegging" post.

 

[TonyKZ1]

If I batch prime, then the only reason I heat up the water is so that the sugar mixes with it easier. I have also bottle primed with the sugar cubes and table sugar and that works fine too.

 

[WrQth]

Obligatory "start kegging" post.

Or get a bright tank from SSBrewTech and a beer gun.

 

[MrTCS]

Boiling also removes dissolved O2 from the water.

 

[domdom]

thanks for the input. i'll probably start trying a quick boil with the dextrose, maybe 3-5 min max. this seems to be the best compromise. pretty sure i've been spooked by something i read early on in my brewing about lacto needing to be killed with a 15 min boil. only had issues w/ that once and it was with a 1+year old light cream ale i found while moving so doesn't seem like too much of a risk.

 

[JimEb]

I always boil with the priming sugar in RO water.

The heat helps completely dissolve the sugar. I'm not too worried about the water being sanitary, but can't be sure something isn't in the corn sugar. I keep mass quantities of it in Tupperware containers in my pantry...next to onions, potatoes, etc.

 

[jddevinn]

In addition to the sanitation concerns pre boiling and chilling will remove the dissolved oxygen in the water. Not boiling will be adding oxygen at a stage that you do not want to.

 

[douglasbarbin]

I rarely bottle (unless it's from a keg), but I usually just use reverse osmosis water and cane sugar. No boiling.

 

[TasunkaWitko]

lacto dies at something like 131 degrees...140, for sure.


Having said that, people should follow the procedure and practices that work for them, because they have confidence in those procedures and practices.