Carbonation Query

[steviec_lj]

Well, Christmas was a drunken one :

Ended up bottling a couple more brews this week, some Jungle Juice (Umbongo), and some of the 8gal of Cider we made.

The cider is nice, but smells a lot like wine. Think we ended up with around 8% ABV in the end, didn't really take any readings, just left it to it to be honest!

We came up with the idea that it could be because its flat, although I'm open to discussion on this one. Anyway, I'd like to carbinate a number of bottle, which at the moment are old Coors 300ml bottles, as thats all I've got currently.

Main question is, using ordinary Granulated Sugar, dissolved in water, is there a magic amount I should be using, some sort of guide somewhere? I'm not particularly interested in buying the carbonation drops from my LHB shop, as we're keeping the costs as low as humanly possible on all of our brews.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[engineer]

Sounds like your xmas was as good as mine

Not sure why you would want to dissolve the sugar in water ?
I just put it straight in the bottle with a funnel then fill the bottle
and leave it in a warm place for a few days for secondary fermentation to happen.

I found a guide (cant recall where) which suggested one tea spoon of sugar in a 500ml bottle so i tried that and it worked well so i have used that measure ever since.

Its fine to scale that up or down (ie 2 tea spoons in a one litre bottle 4 in a two litre bottle etc) as long as your bottles are pressure capable. I tend to use 500ml and 2 litre pop bottles for my cider the level of fizz this measure provides seems about right for me.

Just finishing 22 litres of "tropical fruit" cider myself smells fantastic, hope it ends up tasting as good as it smells.

 

[Wolfracer]

Tablespoon? Are you sure?
I've made a couple of batches of turbo cider, the first I put in a flattish teaspoon of granulated sugar. It was nicely fizzy.
The last ones I put a heaped teaspoon of brewing sugar (dextrose) its a lot finer, so I think you get a lot more sugar per spoon using this.
As a result the latest batch is like champagne! It doesn't froth up anymore or gush, but is extremely fizzy with those smaller bubbles that sort of fizznon your tongue. As long as they don't start exploding? I'm keepimg them all till the summer for some "fizz"
Hope that helps.
If not i'd recco a good rounded teaspoon of granulated. ;-)

 

[Wolfracer]

Just noticed you are using 300ml bottles. All mine were 500ml. So on that basis a flat*teaspoon funnelled into the bottom.of the bottle before filling should be good.

 

[matt666]

I've always used a teaspoon, relatively heaped like i would usefor a cup of tea. Amounts to 7g as I've weighed it. I think if you use a tablespoon you're risking bottle bombs.

 

[engineer]

Yes teaspoon !!! not tablespoon was having a senior moment last night....... :sad: modded the original post to correct it thanks.

 

[steviec_lj]

Bombs hmmmm..I've use for a few bombs.. Ahem hem ahem sorry, daydreaming.



Yet to purchase a capper and caps, but will definitely give it a go. Thanks for the information regarding amounts per bottle, personally I use a "Calpol" spoon for all of my measurements, 2.5ml at one end and 5ml at the other. Yeast, nutrient, glycerine, etc get a level 5ml end, but I think I'll start out with the 2.5ml end per bottle to see what fizz that gives me.

 

[tonyhibbett]

At 8% abv, it is in fact apple wine!

 

[steviec_lj]

Always led to believe Cider is between 1.2% and 8.5%abv