Priming (Corn) Sugar vs. DME for Hefeweizen?

[brewinginct]

I'm about to bottle a hefeweizen and I need to decide what to prime with. Normally I prime my beer with extra light DME, but I'm thinking about using corn sugar for the hefeweizen, mostly to be able to drink it fully carbed sooner because it's best to drink fresh..

Should I go for the quick carbonation and use corn sugar? I use xlDME because I've been told it gives a better overall carbonation, will I be sacrificing anything going with corn sugar?

Any success with either? How much corn sugar or dme did you use? I'd like to shoot for 3 volumes of co2 but don't own a scale, would 1 cup of priming sugar work?

 

[arnoldk2]

All I use is corn sugar. I've never had a problem or off flavors. It takes less amount of corn sugar to carbonate a bottle of beer than DME. I use this calculator ( http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/priming.html )to figure out how much I need. If you don't have a scale I would suggest you buy one. They are cheap and it would be sad to ruin a beer because you're guesstimating on how much priming sugar you need.

 

[zeb]

I had great success with LDME. I checked my first bottle of a 90 min IPA clone after 10 days and it was carbonated perfectly as well as great taste. Its 4 weeks now and they are tasting better every time I open one up.

What I always read about is corn sugar creates "bigger bubbles" where DME creates "smaller bubbles". I guess that's true, but either way I am happiest with DME. To me, its a more natural way since you don't exactly use straight up sugar in your wort for any reason or at any other time for that matter except priming.

But that's just my personal opinion, and truthfully you cannot go wrong with either way.

EDIT: also I use 1/4 cup of DME for every gallon. Most recipes call for 1 1/4 cups for 5 gallons, so simple math makes that a 1/4 cup for each gallon. If you stick with that formula, you wont have any chance of bottle bombs. I ended up with only 4 gallons on my last batch so I only use 1 cup of LDME.

 

[brewinginct]

Thanks for the replies. I ended up going with 1 cup of corn sugar. It should give just enough extra carbonation to be somewhat true to style and the corn sugar will finish fermenting faster.