1st brew time to bottle, priming questions

[TheEagleRising]

So I have been reading and reading and reading some more. I've looked at calculators etc..... So should I go with highest temp achieved during fermentation to calculate, temp on bottling day, or just say screw it and use sugar dots 1ea per 12oz bottle? It's a simple brown ale that came with my kit. And after the PITA of cleaning bottles, I'm sure kegging is in my near future lol.

Thanks for all the advice so far.

 

[joe_sallo]

I’m not sure I follow why you want to know temperature unless you are talking about correcting a hydrometer. What you care about is the terminal gravity, the kit should tell you what the beers typical gravity is when fully fermented. You measure that with a hydrometer, take the temperature of the sample and apply any corrections if the sample temp is not the temp the hydrometer was calibrated at. Once it reaches the terminal gravity the beer will settle down and clear. Then you can rack it into another sanitizer container to bottle. I’m not sure what a sugar dot is, sorry. For a brown ale I would use about 1 ounce of priming sugar per gallon.

 

[beerlover77]

Use a priming calc if you wish like this one:
http://www.brewunited.com/priming_sugar_calculator.php

Put the approx temp during fermentation, the vol of beer to be primed and it will spit out the weight of sugar to add.
I use dextrose (corn sugar) boiled in a small amount of water and add as a syrup but you can use white sugar too.

 

[RPh_Guy]

The temperature you enter should be the highest temperature the beer reached between the end of fermentation and bottling.

For bottling these are your friends:
Bucket and PBW for easy cleaning.
Bottling bucket with spigot and bottling wand.
Bottle washer that attaches to a sink (if you have a suitable sink).
Bottle sanitizer sprayer.
Some kind of bottle drying rack (I like the FastRack).
Scale.

I’m not sure I follow why you want to know temperature unless you are talking about correcting a hydrometer.... I’m not sure what a sugar dot is, sorry....

The calculator needs temperature to estimate how much CO2 is dissolved in the beer.

Some people call sugar cubes "dots". They can be used to prime individual bottles instead of bulk priming.

 

[RM-MN]

I’m not sure I follow why you want to know temperature unless you are talking about correcting a hydrometer. What you care about is the terminal gravity, the kit should tell you what the beers typical gravity is when fully fermented. You measure that with a hydrometer, take the temperature of the sample and apply any corrections if the sample temp is not the temp the hydrometer was calibrated at. Once it reaches the terminal gravity the beer will settle down and clear. Then you can rack it into another sanitizer container to bottle. I’m not sure what a sugar dot is, sorry. For a brown ale I would use about 1 ounce of priming sugar per gallon.

The post above tells a little about the temperature used to calculate the sugar for priming. The amount of CO2 that remains dissolved in the beer depends on the temperature of the beer. At temperature goes up, more CO2 is pushed out. You need to calculate the amount of sugar that will ferment out in the bottles to add to the amount of CO2 remaining so your beer has the right amount of carbonation. You don't want undercarbonated beer, it will seem "flat" and overcarbonated beer becomes gushers or bottle bombs.

Sugar dots are a particular brand of sugar cubes. Look for Domino Dots.

 

[Jtk78]

...For a brown ale I would use about 1 ounce of priming sugar per gallon.

In addition to what @RPh_Guy said above, I have never used 5oz of sugar in a 5 gallon batch to prime. Use the calculator to;
A - Confirm you carbonate to an appropriate level for the style
B - Prevent bottle bombs

Edit - @RM-MN gave a better description and typed faster than I did. However, I stand by my post.

 

[rood_dragon]

Thanks guys I learned something today I have almost always kegged my beer so never looked into the scientific side of bottling

 

[jack13]

To OP: I certainly suggest taking advice from experienced brewers/bottlers and taking your best educated guess as to the proper amount of priming sugar to use. But, you will need a bit of a sense of humor about the whole thing, as sometimes you may just get under- or over-carbonated beers. Well, unless kegging really is in your near future as you said it might be.

For me, the control over carbonation I got from switching to kegs was a bigger relief than the PITA of the bottling process itself.

 

[Jayjay1976]

I always measure carefully when i batch prime and use brewersfriend calc to figure the amount of sugar to use and have had several overcarbed batches, a couple even dangerously so. Be careful with your measurements and what level of carbonation you are targeting.

 

[joe_sallo]

Use a priming calc if you wish like this one:
http://www.brewunited.com/priming_sugar_calculator.php

Put the approx temp during fermentation, the vol of beer to be primed and it will spit out the weight of sugar to add.
I use dextrose (corn sugar) boiled in a small amount of water and add as a syrup but you can use white sugar too.

That calculator is pretty cool, thanks.

 

[joe_sallo]

In addition to what @RPh_Guy said above, I have never used 5oz of sugar in a 5 gallon batch to prime. Use the calculator to;
A - Confirm you carbonate to an appropriate level for the style
B - Prevent bottle bombs

Edit - @RM-MN gave a better description and typed faster than I did. However, I stand by my post.

I see what you mean from the calculator but I’ve never had an issue with over-carbonation let alone a bottle bomb. That said, I’ll change my process, this makes sense.

 

[beerlover77]

Just another thing... my friend would cold crash his whole batch before bottling and put that fridge temp into the calculator. His beer was always flat because that confuses the calculator and it will output way to low priming sugar. Make sure you use your average fermentation temp!

Usually for a 5g batch I would use between 3-5oz of corn sugar. 3oz will be a low carbed British ale and 5oz will be on the high carb end maybe for a wheat beer. Around 4oz will gave me a normal amount of carbonation with beer fermented about 68f. Of course this will depend a bit on the temp too. If you use volume measurements and aren't careful then there will be bottle bombs!

FYI: Kegging is the way to go LOL

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

Domino dots are not the best practice, but I must admit I have used them on a few very small batches, and the carb level was fine, with no contamination (which is a risk doing it that way)

 

[RPh_Guy]

Make sure you use your average fermentation temp!

This is not correct.

Here's an example:
A beer ferments at 62F.
When fermentation finishes it has 0.95 vol CO2.
Move the beer out of the fermentation chamber and let it sit for a day at 75 (maybe you needed space in your fermentation chamber or want to let it settle in your bottling area).
The beer now has 0.78 vol CO2.

What would you enter into the calculator as the temp if bottling right now?
75F, otherwise you'll be undercarbonating by 0.17 vol.

Let's say you now cold crash the beer to 35F.
What temp would you enter if bottling now?
Still enter 75F.
If you enter 62 you'll be 0.17 vol too low.
If you enter 35 you'll be 0.83 vol too low.

Hope this helps

 

[JimRausch]

RPh is a wise man. At least when it comes to bottling!

 

[beerlover77]

This is not correct.

Here's an example:
A beer ferments at 62F.
When fermentation finishes it has 0.95 vol CO2.
Move the beer out of the fermentation chamber and let it sit for a day at 75 (maybe you needed space in your fermentation chamber or want to let it settle in your bottling area).
The beer now has 0.78 vol CO2.

What would you enter into the calculator as the temp if bottling right now?
75F, otherwise you'll be undercarbonating by 0.17 vol.

Let's say you now cold crash the beer to 35F.
What temp would you enter if bottling now?
Still enter 75F.
If you enter 62 you'll be 0.17 vol too low.
If you enter 35 you'll be 0.83 vol too low.

Hope this helps

You may be totally bang on here and my assumption was from fermentation temp straight down to cold crash temps. My beer room never gets over 67-68f so 75f would never happen in my case. Not so sure 1 day is going to change the Co2 that much but not trying to be argumentative and my point was mainly this: Don't put the cold crash temp into the calculator and expect it to carb up to the level you expect.
In the first example undercarbing by 0.17 vol too low will not be so noticeable
In the second example undercarbing by 0.83 vol will be outright flat

 

[RPh_Guy]

The temperature you enter should be the highest temperature the beer reached between the end of fermentation and bottling.

In your case that sounds like the temp at the end of fermentation (not average). You can't assume everyone else has the same process.

How quickly does CO2 gas off when it's oversaturated? Well, how long does it take for your beer to go flat after you pour it into a glass? Is it more than a day?

 

[beerlover77]

I think we have answered the OP's question now but may have scared him off lol...
Sugar dots can be used but are inaccurate, so is priming each bottle individually. It's best to use a Priming Calculator using the highest temp the beer reached between the end of fermentation and bottling and make sure you add the priming sugar to the whole batch of beer liquefying it first by boiling with a bit of water.

 

[Jtk78]

I think we have answered the OP's question now but may have scared him off lol...
Sugar dots can be used but are inaccurate, so is priming each bottle individually. It's best to use a Priming Calculator using the highest temp the beer reached between the end of fermentation and bottling and make sure you add the priming sugar to the whole batch of beer liquefying it first by boiling with a bit of water.

I've used the Domino sugar cubes very successfully when bottling a few bottles prior to kegging. They are a bit much in a stout.