Help Please! Secondary Fermentation

[SkyBlue]

Hello!

After what appears to have been a successful first ever AG Brew day I am about to keg 23litres of an IPA which is coming in at 7.4%.

How much sugar should I use for secondary fermentation? I’ve seen suggestions about using spray malt as opposed to brewing sugar so I’m after advice, please, on what to use and how much? I guess that by using too little then CO2 won’t build up but what happens if I use too much??

Thanks

Andy

 

[Nicks90]

If you use too much, you could end up with bottle bombs, or at the least when you open a bottle - it'll gush all over your walls/ceiling.
I usually go with a level teaspoon of sugar per 500ml bottle no matter what the strength of the beer

 

[terrym]

There's no real need to use anything else other than sugar to prime your bottles. I use ordinary table sugar, its cheap, and it dissolves fairly easily. Dextrose is similar except it costs more.
Use this to calculate your priming sugar rate
Beer Priming Calculator - Brewer's Friend
If you are working with teaspoons, I work on one slightly rounded tsp being about 4.5 gm. If you are unsure weigh 20tsp of sugar then average it out.
I use about half tsp per 500ml for ales, and 3/4tsp for beers like lagers and American IPAs.

 

[Fil]

In a pressure barrel (keg?) priming with between 80-160g of simple sucrose is sufficient for conditioning, most pressure barrels have some sort of pressure relief valve which should bleed out excess pressure over 10-12psi so adding more wouldnt be fruitful as it would probably result in the excess co2 getting vented off.

if using a keg as part of a dispensing system then i would suggest conditioning via pressure as it will produce less sediment and can be accomplished much quicker.

circa 80g for low conditioned ale and 160g for beers with higher condition, you wont be able to condition to the same level as you can in a bottle or keg as pressure barrels wont contain the pressure needed.

I agree no point wasting expensive dme( spray malt) on the task, the proportion of sugar used for priming is insignificant when compared to the kilos you provided for the primary so would require the finest of delicate pallets to distinguish any flavour difference ..

And for the same reason you needn't be as careful with the temperature yu keep the conditioning beer at for the first week or two as even if you do let it warm up past the level you would let your primary fermentation run at any flavour impact as a consiquence wont be noticable just keep it warm for a few weeks before letting it cool to serving temps to mature for at least a further week or two.

if you have brewing sugar you may as well use it up, just dont buy any more its one of the biggest rip offs in home brewing, in a commercial environment reducing time in a primary fermentor by 12-24 hours can reduce costs, so using brewing sugar which is simply monosacherides can be advantageous however when brewing at home where beer sits in the FV for a week or two anyway i cant see any advantage in spending the extra and not simply using sucrose ( tate n lyle or silver spoon etc) which is a slightly more complex sugar comprising of 2x monosacherides with an O2 that the yeast can crack and consume easily enough even if it takes a few more hours to crack first.

 

[SkyBlue]

Thank you guys. A great help. I will post the recipe I’ve done if it’s of any use to anyone.

Wishing everyone a Happy Christmas.

Cheers

Andy

 

[terrym]

In a pressure barrel (keg?) priming with between 80-160g of simple sucrose is sufficient for conditioning, most pressure barrels have some sort of pressure relief valve which should bleed out excess pressure over 10-12psi so adding more wouldnt be fruitful as it would probably result in the excess co2 getting vented off.

circa 80g for low conditioned ale and 160g for beers with higher condition, you wont be able to condition to the same level as you can in a bottle or keg as pressure barrels wont contain the pressure needed.

If you own a standard PB with the standard tap (I have three) it is not a good idea in my view to prime with more than about 95g of sugar. If you add any more you will dispense more foam than beer, at least until the pressure drops, and drawing off liquid beer can require lots of patience. Also, in my view, you will pressure stress the barrel, although ultimately the excess pressure should vent through the pressure relief device, assuming you have one fitted (most PBs do) and it is working.
Standard PBs work fine with most beers, really good with stouts imo, but if you require your beer to be highly carbed like wheat beers, AIPAs and lagers you are better off packaging into bottles.