Priming based on gravity points.

[Soldevi]

I've been poking around this morning and was wondering something.

I have primed 3 batches with cane sugar and have had only partial success. So I want to do some experiments. I'm going to stick with the cane sugar but I want to prime individual bottles for testing. I want to boil the sugar as usual but put different amounts in each bottle.

Palmer's book says to prime with 2-3 gravity points per gallon. So does that mean if I wanted a solution to prime with it would have a gravity reading of 1.003? ( .003*1 = 1.003 ) And if it were a 5 gallon batch it would read 1.015? ( .003*5 = 1.015 ).

Problem is I need a reading for 12oz. I found a calculator which says for 12oz I would need about 2.84 grams of sugar. If I multiply 2.84*10.6 which is 128oz/12 I get 30.1 grams of sugar. If I diluted 30.1g of sugar into a gallon of water and measured the gravity would this be correct?

Then I can add different amounts in mL to each bottle for testing.

My head is spinning LMFAO.

 

[DarthMalt]

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[PoppinCaps]

First off, why cane sugar and not corn sugar? No problem with either, just wondering.

Palmer means that your final beer gravity should be 0.003 higher than the FG by adding the sugar before bottling, regardless of the volume of the beer. If you add 4-5oz (by wt) of dextrose to a 5 gallon batch, you get 0.0025 gravity points added to the beer's gravity. You can extrapolate what that would be for 1 gal, etc. So no, 1.015 is not what you're shooting for, and is 5 times the amount you should be putting in there.

Yes, if you put 30.1 grams in 1 gallon, you'd get an additional 3 gravity points in that gallon. But you'd want to put those 30 grams into a gallon of your beer, otherwise you'd be diluting too much when adding to the bottle if done in water (which should be obvious). What I would do is come up with a concentrated form of the sugar, and add a measured amount of that to your bottles (like as is done normally). Typically, you add around 2.5% the volume of the final beer in sugar dissolved in water (2 cups with 4oz dextrose in a 5 gallon batch). Use that as a standard for your concentrated solution and go very little up and down by volume, like 2%-3% among your test bottles. Much more and you're inviting bombs (5% would give you twice the amount of a normal carb addition, and will definitely explode on you).

 

[Soldevi]

OK I guess I could dilute 4oz of corn sugar into 2 cups which is about 2.4 vol of c02 @ 5 gallons of beer. And then break that down to an amount for 12oz.

So 2 cups = 16oz/640oz = .025oz*12 = .3oz per bottle or 8.8mL per bottle

Does that look correct for a starting point?

I guess I was thinking I could make a solution that had a specific gravity and measure an amount from that per bottle.

 

[PoppinCaps]

Yep, that looks good. Ive seen lots of different opinions on how much corn sugar to add, and 4oz always works well for me. I think 5oz is too much, personally.