Priming

[Goddard69]

Hi I'm brewing my first ever beer from a kit. It's an English real ale and it's been in the fermentation bucket for a week now so I'm thinking about racking. I've decided to bottle half and keg half as it's my first, to get a feel for both methods. First off is it a good idea to both bottle and keg?

Secondly the instructions that come with the kit only specify how to keg the beer. They say to use 3 tblsp of sugar ( not included in the kit!) I was wondering should I simply split the sugar up and put half in the keg and distribute the other half evenly into bottles? Or should I should I put all of the sugar into the keg, then bottle half of it straight from the keg?

Being new to this I would like to get everything right and I've seen so many different ways for priming I don't know which is the best! Please respond I need some reassurance as I am worried about ruining my first batch of beer!

 

[downinit]

Nothing wrong with doing both. If you have a keg with a co2 supply you don't need to add sugar to the beer that's going into the keg. The best way to prime for bottling is to either use carbonation drops or to use a bottling bucket where you add a sterilized solution of sugar to the beer and then fill the bottles from there.
Personally, I always keg most of my beer and just bottle a six pack or two. If you have a keg there is not much need for the chore of bottling except for portability and gifts for friends.

 

[Golddiggie]

Only fermenting for a week is far too little time... Let it go at least 2-3 weeks, take a hydrometer reading, and then make sure fermentation has completed (multiple, identical readings over several days)...

For how much sugar to use, there are plenty of tools out there to calculate how much to use, for CO2 volumes (range depends on the brew style) in the brew. Such as Beer Smith, which will let you enter a CO2 volume target, and tell you how much sugar to use, at the brew's temperature, to get there.

I do so hate how some recipes will use blanket sugar amounts (in volume, not even by weight, which is another issue) without telling you at what temperature, or even what CO2 volume it will give you... It's getting a new car and having no information as to what you should get for gas mileage, and what size tank it has.

 

[Goddard69]

Ok thats cleared a few things up. The instructions for beer kit are very vague from a beginner's perspective! cheers for the comments lads!