I won't prime this wAy again !

[fartinmartin]

I am hundreds of brews in, but found myself with a one gallon batch, it had a normal brew and normal fermentation, it had finished at 1.008ish. I bottled it and for some obscure reason, or no reason at all , I somehow found myself with the brew in the bottles , but without the priming sugar. No problem , I will just add half a spoon full of white table sugar to each bottle - whoa!
As soon as I put the sugar in the bottle it foamed up, so quick that it was coming out of the bottle before I could get the cap on, it turned out to be quite a messy affair. I have no idea what is going on in those bottles.

Any one else had this type of reaction to the priming sugar in this very non preferred method ?

 

[ericbw]

When you add sugar grains, the CO2 gloms onto all that new surface area. It comes out of solution very fast. I've done it, too.

Maybe a cube of sugar would be less volatile?

 

[KeninMN]

Or make a sugar solution and add it with an eye dropper or disposable pipette of known volume.

 

[fartinmartin]

Thanks for both replies, but I have done it this way before , way back, without the problem.

 

[myndflyte]

I understand why the beer does this when you add the sugar, but why doesn't it do it when you add the sugar to the bottles first and add beer on top of it?

 

[Kahless]

When I first bottled with sugar in the bottle it did do that, but only to the extent of producing a head on the beer. Maybe the sugar gets surrounded by a smaller volume of beer before the rest comes in on top, and interacts only with that?

 

[fuelish]

When you add sugar grains, the CO2 gloms onto all that new surface area. It comes out of solution very fast. I've done it, too.

^^^ This ^^^ the sugar grains add "nucleation points" for the CO2.....goes crazy realeasing CO2 still in solution....paininthearse, but perfectly normal.....don't do that

 

[BrewSRQ]

Did you cold crash? The colder the solution, the more dissolved CO2.

More CO2 = more bubbles

 

[Yooper]

I understand why the beer does this when you add the sugar, but why doesn't it do it when you add the sugar to the bottles first and add beer on top of it?

It sometimes does, but not as much as adding the sugar to beer with a little carbonation in it (residual co2 from fermentation).

It's the same principle as the "coke and mentos" experiment- nucleation points. Adding a solid (sugar) to a liquid with gas in it really demonstrates that principle!

 

[sumbrewindude]

Put the sugar in first, then put the beer in.

If you do it the other way around, well - you learned.

 

[Brettomomyces]

Or make a priming solution/syrup and use that, no more solids at all

 

[vensik]

Why are you adding sugar directly to the bottles anyway? Adding it, dissolved in water, to the fermenter should achieve a more uniform carbonation across bottles.

 

[ericbw]

I understand why the beer does this when you add the sugar, but why doesn't it do it when you add the sugar to the bottles first and add beer on top of it?

Because you instantly have thousands of grains running through the whole volume of beer. If it's on the bottom, some beer contacts it, but it happens slowly. So a little foam, then you cap it, so no overflow.

 

[fartinmartin]

I thought I was clear enough, I cocked up !
I always use a solution, in the bottling bucket, before the beer goes in. That's the only way I do it.
On this occasion the beer was already in the bottle so had little choice.
Doing it with a solution in just 8 bottles has it's own complications.

 

[Johnnyhitch1]

I thought I was clear enough, I cocked up !
I always use a solution, in the bottling bucket, before the beer goes in. That's the only way I do it.
On this occasion the beer was already in the bottle so had little choice.
Doing it with a solution in just 8 bottles has it's own complications.

If you had that much co2 come out of suspension i would question wether fermentation was finished.

How long was it from when you capped the bottles till you realized you didn't use priming sugar?

 

[fartinmartin]

Johnyhitch1.
The brew had been in the FV for at least five weeks,
The OG was 1.050. The FG was 1.006
It was less than ten minutes in the bottle before I added the sugar.

I don't believe that this has anything to do with co2 coming out of solution in the brew . The reaction is instant around each grain of sugar, almost explosive.
The amount of gas and foam has got me thinking on , perhaps wrongly , about "instant" carbonation . This reaction was powerfull, it squirted out from under the crown cap , so pushing the capper the cap and my hands away till I really got to grips with it, a real phfssssssssss !

 

[bu_gee]

I know this isn't helpful at this stage, but perhaps if you find yourself in this position again with no way to remedy it, or you want to try it on just a bottle or two the next time you forget priming sugar, it may (or not) be useful.

If you had some sort of sanitized cork, you could have shaken the beer to force the carbonation out of solution like you can with a bottle of soda and then added the sugar. That may cause ancillary damage to the beer, but it still beats beer on the floor.

 

[fartinmartin]

Having taken so much trouble not to get a single bubble in my brew re oxygenation, I won't be shaking my bottles.

 

[bu_gee]

Having taken so much trouble not to get a single bubble in my brew re oxygenation, I won't be shaking my bottles.

That's what I meant by ancillary damage, but there's always plenty of oxygen on the floor, I suppose.

 

[troy2000]

I have a 'session saison' that's been setting around in Bud Light aluminum bottles since early spring; I brewed and bottled it especially as a summer thirst quencher to take fishing. I forgot to prime it, and had the same result when I tried to add sugar later: a geyser. Not nearly as bad as the OP's, but enough to put a stop to the proceedings.

It never occurred to me to use simple syrup instead of dry sugar. Dohhh...

Summer's mostly gone, and I never made it out the door to go fishing anyway; too many hours and days of overtime. But there'll be other occasions when I'll want to drink a few homebrews and stay on my feet. So I guess I'm going to find out what an aged session saison tastes like...