Carbonation Levels, Hoegaarden Clone Clarity

[tronnyjenkins]

Two questions regarding a couple of my brews:

1. I have brewed four different beers, and I would like to know is there a special way/guide to calculate how much priming sugar to put into a specific type of beer? It seems the ones that I have wanted to have medium carbonation have had too much, and vice versa.

The first batch we just used what the homebrew shop gave us (It was pre-sealed and didn't read an Oz or cup measurement)
The next few batches, that seemed on the light side of things, we started with the 3/4 cup for 5 gallon suggestion and divided out for our batch size.

2. Second, and this is just because I am curious. We brewed a Hoegaarden clone, using an all-grain stove top method. It involves having a very fine curtain fabric type bag to line the inside of the brew/mash kettle and uses no sparge.

Why would my beer be less cloudy than expected? It tastes great (minus low carbonation).

 

[avidhomebrewer]

1. For all my batches, I use 2/3 cup corn sugar (dextrose) or 1 and 1/4 cup DME. Seeing as corn sugar is cheaper, I go with that. Of course, fermentation needs to be completed otherwise you may get bottle bombs. Not fun. Make sure you have active yeast when you bottle too.

2. That fabric filtered out most of the stuff you were expecting to see. I'd be willing to bet that the fabric had a fair amount of gunk in it when you were done with the batch. That would have eventually settled out (I never filter my brews).

 

[tronnyjenkins]

That's the thing, they all carbed up in a week. I just can't figure out why the carbonation levels would seemingly vary so much...

There was a large amount of gunk in the bag... I guess that probably was it.

 

[starrfish]

I use 3/4 of a cup of priming (corn sugar) 1 1/4 cup of DME if I have some left over for a 5 to 5.5 Gallon batch. 2/3 seems light I use that for english milds, bitters, and brown ales. ( historically lower carb'd beers) 3/4 for everything else like (english & americanpale ales, wheats, porters and anything german. ((my usual styles)))

 

[tronnyjenkins]

OK. Maybe I fudged up something then, because we tried 3/4 cup and it just isn't carbed enough. Totally possible.