How much corn sugar?

[TurboBrew]

I'm brewing a hefeweizen at the moment and it's time to bottle. The problem is when I was copying the recipe from a book at the brew shop, I forgot to write down the amount of priming sugar to use and the amount of water. And they're closed till wednesday. What I do know is it's an extract recipe, no mash, 5 gallon batch, and the ending gravity is 1.011. Is this enough for you experts to tell me how much I should use? So far every time I've bottled ( all 3 times) it's called for 2 cups of sugar, but this is my first hefe and wasn't sure if things were different. Help , I want this beer carbed, it tastes fantastic.

 

[Beerrific]

Bookmark this:
http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipator/carbonation.html

This will tell you to go for somewhere around 7 oz. You might need to be careful, regular glass bottles might not be able to hold that pressure.

 

[TurboBrew]

Awesome site. Thanks a lot, you just made it possible for this brewer to have his beer in 7 days rather than 9. Which pretty much means I'm willing to take a bullet for you.

Edit: I've been using normal 22oz. bottles with no bombs yet and I'm pretty sure I added WAY too much sugar to my last batch with no bombs. Will these work though? Just got 'em..

 

[Yooper]

Those calculators are nice- but I always just use 4 ounces of priming sugar for 5 gallons of beer. I weigh my sugar, but I'm thinking it's around 2/3 cup. I've been happy with the carbonation. If you used 2 cups in five gallons (that's 3 times what I use), I'm surprised you haven't had problems with excessive carbonation. I suggest always weighing the priming sugar, since sugar can kind of pack down and you might get differing amounts each time.

 

[TwoHeadsBrewing]

Here's my VERY un-scientific method, for a 5.5 gallon batch:

3/4 cup (loose) for "normal" carbonation
3/4 cup (packed) for "high" carbonation

What I mean by loose, is I just stick my measuring cup in the corn sugar bag, and get out a roughly level scoop. For packed, I do the same thing but smack it on the counter a few times so that the sugar settles down. Keep adding a bit of sugar and settling it until you can't fit any more in the measuring cup.

If you've got a scale, Yooper's method is much more accurate...but if you don't my method has worked fairly well for me.

 

[TurboBrew]

Thanks guys, and yes the last batch was retardedly carbed. Whoops, oh well it was a kit. Bottling is commencing as we speak.