Dang dang dang screwed up priming sugar

[whatwhatwtf]

Ola fellow brew fiends — I'm new to the brew - brewing up 10 gals for St Paddys Day - 5 of red ale and 5 of IPA off of brewers best kits - It will be 12 days in bottle for the red and six days in bottle for the IPA tomorrow. Cleaning up and organizing my equipment and found a surprise back of priming sugar. Surprise! No idea where it came from, could have sworn I put the sugar in but obviously did not. Fug. Most likely from the IPA as I was distracted on bottling day.

Anyone have any suggestions? Do I have to pitch the whole thing? Do I drain from all the bottles and add the sugar and re-bottle; sanitizing the whole batch of bottles again — Are those carbonation pills any good? If I pop the tops on my 22oz bottles do I need to re-sanitize them? Damn damn - no way it will be done in time for St Paddys

 

[ILoveBeer2]

Wait another week and see if a bottle in each batch appears to be carbed. The still bottle/batch was not primed. You can uncap the flat batch and add a carefully measured amount of sugar or go to the LHBS and buy carb drops.

Be carefull in your judgement or you will get bottle bombs if you guess wrong.

 

[brnooewb]

I would agree with the above poster. I had to use the carb drops once and they worked great.

 

[apburnett]

can i reyeast a batch i belive needs it

 

[blueseamonkey]

Various books I have read suggest that priming sugar is not essential, that a beer will eventually come into condition with or without it as the yeast gradually ferments the last of the complex sugars left in the beer. It does take quite a bit longer to happen though, anything up to 6 weeks apparently.

However, I don't know how well it would work in the case of the longer fermentations that are recommended by many on this forum. I would guess that it would take longer still for conditioning to happen due to less residual sugars in the beer - if indeed it happened at all... Any thoughts people?

How long did you leave these beers in the fermenters? And what were your FG readings?

My suggestion (wise or not I'm not sure) would be to leave all your bottles somewhere nice & warm in the hope they will condition naturally. Putting extra sugar in after another week would not leave enough time for carbonation to happen before St Paddy's Day and you'd release any CO2 that had formed naturally.

 

[harrymanback92]

I've never heard of a beer carbonating without the addition of sugar unless it's infected.

I had a pale ale that I didn't use enough sugar and it never carbonated properly. Forgot about two bottles and opened them after 18 months. Nothing had changed, can you provide a source for where you read this?

 

[blueseamonkey]

can you provide a source for where you read this?

Home Brewing, The CAMRA guide, by Graham Wheeler. 1993, CAMRA Books

I am only going by what I've read though, I'm far too impatient to put my beer to condition without sugar so I've never tried it.

 

[blueseamonkey]

Here's a quote from pg 115 of this book... the phrase in italics is my addition as it provides the context for this passage.

Priming is another operation that should not be necessary if the beer is well brewed. It is the byproducts generated by the gradual fermentation of residual dextrins that are responsible for the extra character and fullness that is typical of a bottled beer. There should be enough residual dextrins remaining in the beer to enable it to come into condition unaided. With the exception of sweet stouts, (traditional British) commercial bottled beers were never primed. However, it is common homebrew practice to prime and many homebrewers prime as a matter of course

Any thoughts on this from the experts? I had vaguely wondered about trying natural conditioning with one of my batches in the future, if I can get my stock of beer high enough to allow it.

 

[homebrewdad]

Various books I have read suggest that priming sugar is not essential, that a beer will eventually come into condition with or without it as the yeast gradually ferments the last of the complex sugars left in the beer. It does take quite a bit longer to happen though, anything up to 6 weeks apparently.

However, I don't know how well it would work in the case of the longer fermentations that are recommended by many on this forum. I would guess that it would take longer still for conditioning to happen due to less residual sugars in the beer - if indeed it happened at all... Any thoughts people?

How long did you leave these beers in the fermenters? And what were your FG readings?

My suggestion (wise or not I'm not sure) would be to leave all your bottles somewhere nice & warm in the hope they will condition naturally. Putting extra sugar in after another week would not leave enough time for carbonation to happen before St Paddy's Day and you'd release any CO2 that had formed naturally.

Not correct. Otherwise, long term storage of beer would be impossible, as every beer would overcarb over time (and potentially become bottle bombs).

If you are witing to bottle untl your gravity is stable (like you should), there is zero CO2 production going on (as this is a byproduct of fermentation). The point of priing sugar is to give the yeast a tiny amount to eat in order to produce the CO2 necessary for carbonation.

Here's a quote from pg 115 of this book... the phrase in italics is my addition as it provides the context for this passage.

Any thoughts on this from the experts? I had vaguely wondered about trying natural conditioning with one of my batches in the future, if I can get my stock of beer high enough to allow it.

Most commercial beers are not primed because they are force carbed, NOT because they are brewed so well that they make CO2 in the bottle by some magical process.

Ye gods, it's terrifying that this level of horrible information actually made it to print somewhere!

 

[homebrewdad]

can i reyeast a batch i belive needs it

Why do you think your beer needs additional yeast? This is usually not needed. The only time you might need to do this for bottling would be if the beer had been aging for a VERY long time at alcohol levels close to the tolerance level for that yeast.

 

[KeyWestBrewing]

I'd say throw a bottle in the fridge over night and see if its carbed or not tomorrow. It may not be fully carbed, but a week is enough time to get some carbonation if you did add priming sugar. If they aren't I'd get some drops. You don't need any additional yeast there's still plenty left to do the job.

As for the carbing in its own thing. The only way I see them pulling that off is if they bottle the beer right before it finishes fermenting and hitting FG. It would be pretty tricky to pull off, but its definitely possible.

 

[blueseamonkey]

Not correct. Otherwise, long term storage of beer would be impossible, as every beer would overcarb over time (and potentially become bottle bombs).

Most commercial beers are not primed because they are force carbed, NOT because they are brewed so well that they make CO2 in the bottle by some magical process.

Ye gods, it's terrifying that this level of horrible information actually made it to print somewhere!

As the book was talking about traditional British bottled beers (I perhaps didn't make it clear enough, but reading in context seemed to suggest those from 50-100 years or more ago) its unlikely he was talking about force-carbed beers.

However, it may be that the bottled beers he was talking about came "into condition," meaning the taste improved in the bottle, but they didn't carbonate, or only very slightly carbonated.

I will have to ask my friends that lent me the book whether they have ever tried this. The book is a huge seller in Britain and thousands of brewers must have read it. How many actually tried this technique, I'm not sure.

 

[homebrewdad]

If you bottled with just a couple of points of attenuation to go, you would get carbonation in the bottles. But that would be risky - it you miscalculated, you'd get bottle bombs.

 

[tennesseean_87]

As the above people have been saying, the only way to bottle condition without priming is to bottle the beer before it hits terminal gravity. To do this, you have to be absolutely certain of your FG before you reach that point and bottle precisely when you are a few points above it. My FG calculations are never that exact, so I won't be doing it.

OP: go get some carb drops and extra caps. Open one of each beer (chilled for a few hours-one day if you want). Drink the carbonated one while you uncap the rest of the other batch and drop in carb tabs. Then recap with new caps. Don't count on that batch being ready in time, but to speed it up, try keeping it really warm. Stick the bottles next to a heat vent or something.