How close to disaster?

[BartJY]

Hi Folks,

Just completed my third brew and I have three questions.

(1) I've used a Brewer's Best kit for all three beers. The bottle day directions state to mix in 4.5 ounces of priming sugar. The sugar comes in 5 oz packets. I just realized that the last two brews had all 5 ozs mixed in. How close did I come to hearing explosions?

(2) Also is the sugar measured by volume or weight?

(3) Today's IPA bottling got 4.5 by weight, will I be hearing fireworks if volume was the right choice?

Thanks
Bart

 

[Jhu1321]

You are fine with 5 oz vs 4.5. you're more likely to get bombs if you bottle the beer before fermentation is complete. Measured by weight.

 

[IslandLizard]

What @Jhu1321 said.^ Make sure the beer is truly done, you'll be fine.

Use a priming calculator such as the one from Brewer's Friend. There are others.

Most important reason to use a calculator is that it's much more precise. Your actual bottling volume can be lower than 5 gallons, caused by miscalculations, racking losses and/or blow off. Sometimes it's higher.

The amount of desired carbonation depends on style. For regular average 12oz longnecks 3 volumes is about the max. Some are better, some are worse, some may have been damaged or are not within spec.

2.7 is pretty high already for most beer.

 

[Bradlo]

Shouldn't be any problem. I've bottled 8 brews and have been using cane sugar every time. At first, I had conflicting / confusing info between beer calculators and conversion charts on how much to use. 2/3 cup? 3/4? I think a post somewhere may have said 1 cup+. I have used both 2/3 and 3/4 which have produced nicely carbonated, creamy beer with no probs.

 

[kh54s10]

Use the calculators if unsure. Make sure you are using the right amount of sugar per volume. WEIGH the sugar, volume is inaccurate due to density. The difference in carbonation between 4.5 and 5 ounces would be small. Unless you bottled before fermentation was finished or used enough sugar for a 5 gallon batch but only had 3 gallons you would not get enough pressure to cause bottle bombs.