Priming Sugar Amount

[Tknishi]

I have noob question about priming sugar calculator, when it asks for volume of beer, am I supposed to put my batch size (5 gal) or the amount I am actually bottling? If it is the actual amount I am bottling, then the conundrum I run into is that I only know how much volume I am bottling after I rack the beer to the bottling bucket (from primary). But everything I read says to put the priming sugar in the bottling bucket first than rack. does that question make sense?

 

[Natdavis777]

It is the amount you are bottling. You can go forward and calculate it @ 5 gal without having a detrimental effect on the finished product.

One thing most people do is put a bit more wort in the fermenter (5.5gal for a 5 gal batch) to account for residual beer left in the fermentor, dry hopping, etc. If you put 5 gal in your fermentor, it is safe to assume you will be bottling a little less than that volume.

 

[BlueHouseBrewhaus]

+1 what Nat said. In general, I find that with a normal amount of trub in the fermenter, I usually end up with .5 - .75 gal less in the bottling bucket. So my 5.5 gal batches end up around 4.75 - 5 gal bottled, which is within a bottle or 3 of 2 cases of beer. Count on losing a little more if you some dry hops in the fermenter.

 

[Tknishi]

thanks for the help. I guess my next batch I will fill up to 5.5 gal. My first batch did have about .5 gal of loss, that is why I was worried I might have used to much priming sugar. Its been 4 days since bottling and no explosions yet, so hopefully it will be alright.

 

[Knkbrand]

Tknishi, no worries about bottle bombs. If you added sugar for 5 gallons, but you only had 4.5 in you bottling bucket is not enough to cause bombs. You may see a slight increase in carbonation, but in my opinion it would be very negligible.