Question re Priming

Hi,

Quick question: Prior to bottling I measure the FG to calculate ABV, then add priming suger and bottle. Does the fermentation of the priming sugar during conditioning add significantly to the ABV?

 

it adds a very small amount of alcohol. Less than .5%...

 

Hardly

 

Ah OK thanks, was just curious.

 

Hi, from the calculation that I have got from a coopers English bitter kit, the priming sugar is taken into account when working it out.

 

No, unless you're taking your FG reading from the beer in bottles and not the beer in the fermenter, you're ABV calculation (which is approximate) doesn't consider the priming sugar. ABV=OG-FG*131.25

 

I´m pulling this out of my ars so be gentle: a pound of sugar in a five gallon batch it´s 8 gravity points, usully we add around 110 to 120 grams of sugar wich it´s aproximatly a quarter of a pound so 8 points/ 4: 2 gravity points added to the beer, 2 points * 131: 0.26 ABV.
I think

 

120 g is ~1/4 of a pound. I add around 3 or so ozs to a five gal batch, around 85 grams. Which would increase ABV by less than .2. Anyway, as was said earlier, priming sugar adds an insignificant amount of fermentable sugar, thus insignificantly, by roughly .2 or so %, increasing ABV.

 

For most of us, this is probably less than the accuracy of the ABV calculation, too. I don't worry about it.

 

This is the calculation I use, it came with the coopers kits.

 

Yeah, neither do I. Until I did the math earlier today, I thought it was more like ~.1%. Really, it also probably depends on the priming sugar used, dextrose is much more fermentable than DME. Either way, one less thing I think about in my beers.

 

Yeah I don´t mind to account for that in my calculations but hey I think the question is answered.

 

That's the one I use,(OG-FG)/7.46 x .5 = ABV% Cooper's takes into account .5%,the other 7 formulas are about 2 or 3 percent. But all 8 formulas give a different answer. Flip a coin as to which seems right to your neurons...