Bottling question

[Secco98]

Very new brewer, my first brew is fermenting away as we speak. And I'm already planning the next one... I had a question about bottling - I got a recipe from the book 'Clone Brews,' which is written for extract brewing, but has mini-mash and all-grain instructions as well.

I'm looking at the Samuel Smith's Winter Welcome recipe, and the extract recipe calls for bottling with 1 1/4 cups Muntons extra-light DME. I figured the all grain recipe wouldn't use extract for bottling, but the all grain recipe doesn't suggest a replacement. I searched here and found what looks like the same all-grain recipe:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/winter-welcome-style-recipe-79969/

The online source says I should use an extract when bottling. Seemed odd, so I just wanted to check - is that correct, using extract in bottling with an all-grain recipe?

 

[RM-MN]

You have to get fermentable sugars that you add to the beer to get carbonation since all the sugars that were in the wort are fermented out. You could make a small batch of wort and add that but it is so much easier to use malt extract and you will get the flavor of that rather than the sugar that is commonly used. That's why the malt extract is used, the flavor and the lack of time and effort to make your own wort to add. It will have a known quantity of sugars too which your wort you made by mashing a small amount of grain would not.

 

[gregfreemyer]

In general you want to have an easy to use sugar to bottle with. Having to mash grains just to get bottling sugar would be a lot of work, plus the gravity would be very low compared to what you need to bottle with, so you'd have add a lot of wort to the beer before you bottle.

DME is relatively low cost for small amounts and easy to keep on hand for bottling needs, starters, raising the gravity of your wort if it came out low, etc.

You can also bottle with table sugar, honey, corn syrup, etc. I've read corn syrup leaves the least sediment in the bottle after the carbonation process is done, so I've been using it recently.

 

[Yooper]

Some people might use DME at bottling, but I'd say the vast majority use sugar. Either corn sugar, available at the homebrew store, or table sugar.

You need 4-5 ounces, by weight, of sugar for a 5 gallon batch.

 

[Secco98]

Thanks everyone! I think I'll start with DME like the recipe says, and experiment with alternatives next time.

 

[unionrdr]

I use this priming calculator that gives table sugar,dextrose (corn sugar) & DME's
to prime with in relative amounts to temp & beer volume; http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/priming.html I think dextrose works the best & gives no residual flavor like DME might. Plus it all ferments out during bottle carbing.