Priming with Agave Nectar

[azezpz1]

Hello all. I'm somewhat new to homebrewing and have a brief question. I've searched the forums quite a bit (along with the internet) and have yet to come up with a good answer for my questions. Is Agave Nectar good to prime with? I've heard using it in your brew will give it a smoother characteristic, but I'm not sure if that'll come through when used to prime. Also, how much should one use in a 5 gallon batch?

Thanks, and let me know if you have any other questions for me.

 

[billtzk]

Hi. Welcome to the forum.

Dextrose (e.g., corn sugar) is cheap and it's suitability to priming is well known. Why mess with a good thing? But I'm sure Agave Nectar will work too.

The bottle of Agave Nectar I have says it contains 15 grams of sugar per tablespoon. A tablespoon of dextrose is about 10.2 grams of sugar.

Refer to http://byo.com/resources/carbonation for the priming tables that will help you calculate how many grams of dextrose (glucose monohydrate) you need to add to get the carbonation level you desire.

Let's say you calculate that you need 113 grams of dextrose to prime 5 gallons of beer based on your beer style, carbonation preference, post-fermentation residual CO2, etc, as indicted in the tables. That would work out to about 11 tablespoons of dextrose, just under 3/4 cup.

If you choose to use Agave Nectar instead, you'll need less because it has more sugar per tablespoon than dextrose. To get 113 grams of glucose, you'd only need 7.5 tablespoons of Agave Nectar for 5 gallons of beer since it is 15 grams of sugar per tablespoon.