Add priming sugar today and bottle tomorrow?

[VAShooter]

I was thinking about racking and priming today and bottling tomorrow. Would this be ok or will my brew start fermenting the priming sugar again in my bottling bucket?

 

[MalFet]

Your yeast will eat the sugar in the bottling bucket, and then release all of the CO2 into the atmosphere. Thus, no carbonation.

 

[Revvy]

Why are so many folks asking about this....do you not understand that carbonation is about trapping the co2 that is produced by the eating of the fresh sugar by the yeast inside a really really really airtight space?"

If you add 5 ounces of sugar to your bottling do you really believe that the co2 wouldn't just go away?

Is this a time saving thing, or what? It takes me 45 minutes to bottle a batch of beer, and that includes sanitizing the bottles.

 

[VAShooter]

Why are so many folks asking about this....do you not understand that carbonation is about trapping the co2 that is produced by the eating of the fresh sugar by the yeast inside a really really really airtight space?"

If you add 5 ounces of sugar to your bottling do you really believe that the co2 wouldn't just go away?

Is this a time saving thing, or what? It takes me 45 minutes to bottle a batch of beer, and that includes sanitizing the bottles.

I thought it was a dumb question but you know what they say. What can I say...I learned something new today.

Yep - Time saving. Takes me a good 1:30 to bottle and thats on a good day. Boiling and cooling priming sugar to 65-70* alone takes 30+ minutes.

If you're racking, boiling sugar, sanitizing bottles and bottling bucket, bottling and capping in 45 minutes, you're the man but I'm not there yet. I've read the bottling tips thread you wrote up and follow that very closely.

 

[nunyafnb]

AFIK, you don't need to cool the priming solution. I never have. Boil it, then pour into bottling bucket and then rack the beer right on top.

 

[Revvy]

I thought it was a dumb question but you know what they say. What can I say...I learned something new today.

Yep - Time saving. Takes me a good 1:30 to bottle and thats on a good day. Boiling and cooling priming sugar to 65-70* alone takes 30+ minutes.

If you're racking, boiling sugar, sanitizing bottles and bottling bucket, bottling and capping in 45 minutes, you're twhe man but I'm not there yet. I've read the bottling tips thread you wrote up and follow that very closely.

Why the heck is it taking you that long to boil your priming sugar, and why are you bothering to cool it? It should take no more than 15 minutes to boil 2 cups of water, and that's if you even bother to boil it for 10 minutes Half the time I bring it up to a boil for a couple minutes, then kill the flame and take it off the stove.

And as for whether it needs to be cool or not, read this.

Give me a break....

You won't kill the yeast even if you drop your 2 cups of boiling sugar into the bottling bucket. It's a ridiculous notion from the start. It doesn't matter if you add it boiling, warm or ice cold. The falling through the air space will lower the temps anyway, as will touching any sanitizer dregs/foam in the bottom of the bucket (which you should have). Bu the the point is moot because seconds from when it gets in the bucket, 5 gallons of room temp beers is going to be crashing right into that, heck you should even have your beer already flowing in there to begin with- who's going to win? The solution's not going to be hot for long.

And even if it were going to kill the yeast it's only going to kill the first yeast flowing into the bucket anyway...but again as soon as the solution comes into contact with the priming solution, it's going to be cooled, so it's not going to be doing much harm to the yeast anyway. There's going to be a ton of yeast and beer in the still in the bucket long before the deadly hot yeast killing priming solution is still going to be remotely warm.....

It really doesn't matter how you add it. It's all going to mixed properly and there will be plenty of yeast to do the job-regardless if any was harmed in the bottling of the beer.

And if you're so concerned about it, just work cooling time (even just on the counter) into your bottling proccess. With my system I usually have 1 case of bottles still yet to santitize when I pull my solution off the stove. A couple minutes later it's already pretty cool anyway.

I talk about it in my thread https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/bottling-tips-homebrewer-94812/

But the idea of 2 cups of boiling priming sugar being in any way harmful to the 5 gallons of beer is just ridiculous, and not very well thought out. It's not like we're talking 5 gallons of boiling liquid crashing into 2 cups of cool beer.....it's just the opposite- the 2 cups doesn't have a chance is this fist fight.

If it's taking you that long to bottle, your process is severly f- up. Go read my bottling tips thread again, especially where I describe my process, and adapt yours. Look especially the discussion I have about "economy of motion" in post six.

You shouldn't be trying to "save time" by doing stuff like you're thinking like adding priming sugar the day before OR scrimping on sanitization like some folks talk about- You need to tweak your process, cut out wasted motion or steps (like waiting for your priming sugar to cool.)

An Hour should be the max it should take to bottle 5 gallons of beer, and that's if you DON'T find your groove.

 

[KevinM]

I boil the water in a water heater (stainless steel one from black&decker) then add a bit of that directly to the dextrose making sure it dissolves and add my beer right on top. If you wanted to, I suppose you do dissolve the dextrose and stick it in the fridge overnight, but you have to be really good about sanitation since it's extra stuff.

also, to shorten bottling time: Use bigger bottles I started going with champagne bottles that were cappable. Or use some other easy methods (I recall seeing someone attach a bottling wand right on the valve of a bottling bucket). And have someone else to create a line. One person fills, other person caps.

Or use kegs.

 

[VAShooter]

Ohh - Nice. Well I just cut off 25-30 minutes by not having to cool the boil to 65. I've always boiled then stuck the pot in the freezer for 20-25 minutes to get it down to 70ish. I've had to sit around waiting during that time with nothing to do.

More info from LHBS that is apparantly severly dated!

This will take me about an hour to bottle at this point.

 

[nunyafnb]

Or use kegs.

+1

 

[malkore]

clean your bottles after using them, then you only need to santize, fill and cap.
get a bottle tree and one of those sanitizer spritzing bowls. You can get it under 60 minutes, easy.

 

[ChshreCat]

You only need to use a small amount of water to dissolve the sugar in. Then when you pour that into your bottling bucket, it's such a wide bottom and the priming solution is in such a thin layer that it's going to cool down almost immediately anyway.

 

[VAShooter]

59 Minutes from start to finish....including racking, sanitizing and clean up. Not waiting for the boil to cool was the key. I had to stop and sing to my 2 year old before bed which took 5-6 minutes too.

Thanks for the help and info.

 

[VAShooter]

You only need to use a small amount of water to dissolve the sugar in. Then when you pour that into your bottling bucket, it's such a wide bottom and the priming solution is in such a thin layer that it's going to cool down almost immediately anyway.

I'm likely doing this wrong as well.

LHBS trained me to boil 1 cup of water and 1 cup of finished beer along with
5oz priming sugar for 3-4 minutes.

 

[Revvy]

59 Minutes from start to finish....including racking, sanitizing and clean up. Not waiting for the boil to cool was the key. I had to stop and sing to my 2 year old before bed which took 5-6 minutes too.

Thanks for the help and info.

It's amazing how fast/easy it can go when you cut out unnecessary things. You even get to do cool stuff like sing to your kid.

(Makes me all mushy inside that my thread made time for parental/child bonding) :rockin:

So what did you sing?

 

[VAShooter]

Kicked it off with Big Green Tractor and headlined with Jingle Bells ( Yeah - it's May, but he's a fan of Christmas time ).

 

[Revvy]

Kicked it off with Big Green Tractor and headlined with Jingle Bells ( Yeah - it's May, but he's a fan of Christmas time ).

LOL.....That would be torture for me, I don't really like Christmas Carols. If my child liked them it would be so hard to be enthusiastic about them.

You're a better man than I am gunga din.

 

[salamastre]

Waiting for stuff to cool is even more boring than watching stuff come to a boil. It just hit me, thank you HBT, that I do not really need to wait for the priming solution to cool, a cool bucket/keg is all I need.

Regardless, I have a lot of canned priming solution in the closet.

I got a canner to can wort for starters. It takes me 1.5 hours to can enough wort for 7 starters. Sometimes I did not brew as planned because I could not find the time to mix, boil and cool starter wort.

Last weekend I canned 14 pint jars of "priming solution". At my carbonation temperature, each jar should give 1.2 volumes in 5 gallons. I have enough priming solution stored now for anywhere from 14 to 7 batches (if I wanted 2.4 volumes in all my batches).

I don't bottle anymore, but I still naturally carbonate in kegs. Caning the priming solution has turned the transfer from secondary into serving keg and priming process form a 1 hour boring chore to a 15 minute joy.

 

[ChshreCat]

I'm likely doing this wrong as well.

LHBS trained me to boil 1 cup of water and 1 cup of finished beer along with
5oz priming sugar for 3-4 minutes.

Try this instead. Bring two cups of plain water (or less) to a boil. Once it hits a boil, take it off the heat, immediately dump in your priming sugar, and stir until the water goes clear.