Bottling and Carbonating

[Jake_Allen]

I know that corn sugar is what alot of people use to carbonate their beers but can I get away with using regular table sugar you buy at any grocery store to carbonate? I just don't want to throw in regular sugar and potentially ruin a 5 gallon batch of beer.

 

[webby45wr]

Table sugar is fine. Make sure you stay away from the fake stuff (splenda) as it doesn't ferment.

Here's a calculator that gives you quantities for using table sugar and corn sugar. Table sugar is actually a bit more reactive, so you use less.

http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/priming.html

 

[Hang Glider]

Just make sure to make a syrup of boiled water and sugar, so you get it all mixed in - don't pour your kitchen sugar shaker into the wort.
A cup of boiling water is plenty. Add sugar as measured from above link, let it cool a good bit (so you don't kill the yeast), and pour into wort, mix gently.

 

[C-Rider]

Just make sure to make a syrup of boiled water and sugar, so you get it all mixed in - don't pour your kitchen sugar shaker into the wort.
A cup of boiling water is plenty. Add sugar as measured from above link, let it cool a good bit (so you don't kill the yeast), and pour into wort, mix gently.

A cup of boiling sugar water is not going to kill the yeast when you mix 5 gallons of wort on top of it. Yeast goes in after the sugar water and wort are mixed together.

 

[Hang Glider]

A cup of boiling sugar water is not going to kill the yeast when you mix 5 gallons of wort on top of it. Yeast goes in after the sugar water and wort are mixed together.

His question was about bottling, not fermenting... yeast are already in there and 212° water will most certainly kill some of those yeasties...though not many as the temperature reaches equilibrium.

 

[glenn514]

When I started brewing, I did use corn sugar. The more I read on this forum and the more I thought about it, I converted to using common table sugar, and have seen absolutely no change in the bottle-carbonated beer. But, as was mentioned, mix the correct amount of sugar in boiling water, and let it cool a bit before dumping it into the cooled wort.

glenn514

 

[dgr]

Dump it in hot. A moment of silence for the 10 yeast cells that died if you wish. They're buddies won't miss them and will carbonate your beer just fine.

 

[TheJasonT]

You could make your yeast happier in the bottle by making an invert sugar. When you use table sugar, just lightly boiling it will retain the majority of it as a long chain sugar or disaccharide. If you add a pinch of Cream Of Tartar or a few drops of lemon juice and boil the mixture for 20 minutes, you will cause the disaccharide to break the chain and convert into two monosaccharides, glucose and fructose, which are much easier for your very tired and worn out bottling yeast to digest.

 

[C-Rider]

His question was about bottling, not fermenting... yeast are already in there and 212° water will most certainly kill some of those yeasties...though not many as the temperature reaches equilibrium.

Right he's talking about bottling! And when you bottle you first put the sugar water in the bottling bucket and then add the beer that has been cooled to somewhere in the 65-75* point during fermenting. So that litle bit of hot sugar water is not going to harm the yeast that is in the cool beer.

 

[dadshomebrewing]

I know that corn sugar is what alot of people use to carbonate their beers but can I get away with using regular table sugar you buy at any grocery store to carbonate? I just don't want to throw in regular sugar and potentially ruin a 5 gallon batch of beer.

table sugar is fine

the other thing you can use, in a pinch, is dry malt extract if you are an extract brewer