Bottle conditioning

My first ipa is in my primary now, I'm going to rack it to the secondary in a couple of days and dryhop it for about two weeks. After this it'll be time to bottle. I plan on bottle conditioning it with dextrose. Its a five gal batch; how much dextrose do I need to use? And will there be enough live yeast cells to create the secondary fermentation and produce enough carbonation to make it good? Or do I need to add yeast?

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I've let beers go in primary 1 month and then 1 month in secondary and bottle conditioned them just fine, just takes longer the longer to carbonate the longer it's been since you brewed.

Curious, why Dextrose? Common, white table sugar is perfectly fine for carbonating bottle conditioned beers and will not change the flavor.

 

Should be fine for viable yeast....I have done many lagers over 4-5 months and there is still enough viable yeast to bottle condition. as far as the amount of dextrose to use...this is a great site to show you the correct carbing to style

http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipator/carbonation.html

 

I've been told by the LHBS in Green Bay that using table sugar can give a beer a cidery taste. Is that true?

 

Table sugar can give beer an off taste, but it is when you ferment with it to bump up the ABV.

 

This will tell you how much sugar to use. Dextrose will work great, that is what I always use.

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

 

I have only ever used ordinary cane sugar ( table sugar ).
Priming with .8oz per gal ( that's U S gal , I am in the UK )

 

Im going to try the tablets next time I bottle. Any thoughts on that?

 

Edit... I keg so i think it will be easier to do a 12pk and then keg the rest.

 

i like this priming calculator: http://www.northernbrewer.com/priming-sugar-calculator/

you don't need to use a secondary. you can dry-hop in primary. transferring to secondary will increase your chances of oxidation and contamination somewhat for little gain.

2 weeks is a long time to dry-hop. 1 weeks is plenty.

i've bottle primed with both dextrose and with sucrose (table sugar), i haven't noticed any difference. that amount you add isn't enough to make a flavor impact.

cider taste: some older texts, like papazian's "joy of homebrewing", say that too much sugar can lead to cider-like tastes when used in large quantities. i'm not sure that statement applies when you used sufficient fresh yeast, aerate well, etc. some belgian ales are over 20% sugar (AKA a lot), they use regular sucrose, and you don't get cider flavors. a few ounces at bottling isn't going to make any impact on flavor.

 

Clankenbrew, the tabs are ok, but not as good as priming the whole brew in the bottling bucket with sugar solution.

 

Cool, thanks for the info.

 

I'm really only using the secondary fermenter for the dry hop to improve clarity. And thanks for the link its perfect.

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