sugar quantity mistake in priming.....

[Chet Ripley]

This talk of storing for a while and re-bottling is head-shaking stuff. I know impatience can influence decisions, but on this one I really think you should do things properly and wait. Uncap every bottle. Now. Put some plastic wrap over them (tape around the neck to hold it tight). It's time consuming, but necessary. Plastic wrap lets gas escape under pressure, but won't let much air-pressure Oxygen get in. Leave the bottles somewhere warm for two weeks. By then, all of the sugar you added will be gone. Then re-cap with two carbonation drops per bottle. No transferring beer (bad) and no bottle bombs (bad) just a bit of effort and time.

+1 to this. I had the same problem last year and this method worked out well. I did sacrifice one bottle to check for stable hydrometer readings before recarbing and recapping.

 

[Nubiwan]

Measure twice, prime once. Also, measuring the priming sugar is one area of brewing where using a precision scale with ~1g resolution is essential.

Can I ask why? I might choose a co2 range of 2.0 - 2.5 for my beer variety which, depending on volume, and fermentation temp, will all return various ranges of priming sugar. Same applies for the temperature I use in the calculation, as well as the volume of beer I am packaging. Difficult to know the exact volume when the measuring the primary over a trub, then adding to a bottling pale. It's a guess at best for volume. Guess you could mark your pale, but you're still eyeballing litres not mLs.

Change any or all of these numbers +/- 0.5, in a priming calculaTor, and the variance in priming sugar required can be 20-30 grams (or more) in many cases. Should I really expect a widely varying range of carbonation In my final product?

 

[Jayjay1976]

Can I ask why? I might choose a co2 range of 2.0 - 2.5 for my beer variety which, depending on volume, and fermentation temp, will all return various ranges of priming sugar. Same applies for the temperature I use in the calculation, as well as the volume of beer I am packaging. Difficult to know the exact volume when the measuring the primary over a trub, then adding to a bottling pale. It's a guess at best for volume. Guess you could mark your pale, but you're still eyeballing litres not mLs.

Change any or all of these numbers +/- 0.5, in a priming calculaTor, and the variance in priming sugar required can be 20-30 grams (or more) in many cases. Should I really expect a widely varying range of carbonation In my final product?

Do you ever brew 1 gallon batches? I'm not suggesting milligram precision here, but cheaper imperial scales only have .1 oz resolution to say nothing of their accuracy. IMHO, not good enough for weighing hops or priming sugar.

 

[Nubiwan]

Do you ever brew 1 gallon batches? I'm not suggesting milligram precision here, but cheaper imperial scales only have .1 oz resolution to say nothing of their accuracy. IMHO, not good enough for weighing hops or priming sugar.

No, its all 5 gallon jobs for me. Its all extract stuff too. I have 4 young kids and SWMBO would naill me to the headboard if she knew I was thinking about taking a weekend afternoon to do a full grain job. So the extract approach is just quick and dirty and still better, or as good as anything commercial. Plus cheaper.

Can see your point for precision if I was doing 1 gallon batches, and you can control volumes easier. Know your grains etc.

When I add water to my extract (5 gallons or so), I simply stop when my OG is at a satisfactory level, so I never know my volume exactly. Then there is my trub space, so I rather have to guess volumes for the caclulator. Can mean a significant difference in what the calculator returns as the correct priming amount. Then if your beer is not listed in the CO2 charts, you are kinda guessing which is the most suitable. Do I use my ferment temp if I bottle at post crash temps? Few differing opinions on that.

All these "decisions" will change the amount of priming sugar you use.

My point was not to question your presicion in weighing, but rather some personal frustration trying to know what works best.

 

[Jayjay1976]

...My point was not to question your presicion in weighing, but rather some personal frustration trying to know what works best.

Accurate measurements work best. Use a quality scale.

 

[Nubiwan]

Accurate measurements work best. Use a quality scale.

The honest answer is that I am too cheap, too lazy or simply forget to buy one when I am out

 

[Gnomebrewer]

Well i will take off the cap for half of my batch and the other half i will continue release the CO2 from the cap .... i will let you know the results of each method. After all this is the great part of a forum, we can study , research and try things and share our results

What were your results, Toto's?

 

[Toto's]

Hello to all
One word BOUM!!!!
Did it happen? Well no it didn't.
I had about 60 bottles, now i have about 35 because my friends loved it lol. You can fit 14 bottles into a 5 gallons bucket. I do have some bottles more primed than others so i released the pressure about every 2 days. The others bottles i released the pressure about every 3-4 days.
My basement is at 12 degrees Celsius. I still have about 6 bottles big time overprimed but all the rest i think they are almost done with the carbonation..... maybe another week or so.
I applied the same technique to my few bottles of Dunkel black beer because they were a bit overprimed . They were not a volcano but they would get out of the bottle after 10-15 seconds but now they are perfect.
So in conclusion, it does work well but i dont think it would have ended well if the temperature would have been 20 degrees Celsius or higher because yeast would have been much more active so i guess you really need to release the pressure every day.
Well tomorrow i will bottle another batch of dunkel beer... guess who is going to verify, and re-verify, and re-re-verify and verify some more!!!!
Hopefully i will not have a nightmare about it this night lol.
For a 5 gallons its about 100g. of sugar. I am not saying this is THE amount because it depends of the temperature, type of sugar etc... but if you calculated 300g well something's is not right.
It must be around 100g!!!
Thank you to all