Sugar addition

[Dave Spens]

Hi. My first time bottling as usually use pressure barrel. My intention is to put it in a barrel then use a bottling stick. I thought the easiest way to sugar it was to put a sugar solution in the barrel, stir in well. However the kit (hammer of thor) says 150g for a barrel or 1 level teaspoon for 500ml bottles which would mean @ 5grms per bottle - 230grms for 46 bottles. Can anyone point me in the right direction please.

 

[Mayor of Simpleton]

That sounds a lot to me, but I could be wrong. I am usually adding about 112g sugar to 19L (38 x 500mL bottles). On bottling day my approach is to transfer my beer from fermenter to bottling bucket. I boil the sugar needed in 100 mL water, cool it and add to the bottling bucket. Then I bottle using an auto syphon and bottling wand.

 

[Galena]

Obviously depends on your desired carbonation level and what kind of sugar they mean as corn sugar (Dextrose) requires more than table sugar for the same level of carbonation. With table sugar 150g would give you approx 2.5 volumes of CO2, if using Dextrose 150g would give about 2.3 volumes CO2. So if you like higher levels of carbonation for the style of beer then that seem to be an acceptable amount.
Personally though I don't like my beer fizzy so prefer 1.6 to 1.8 or 2.0 max which would be 71g, 90g and 108g of table sugar respectively.

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

Hi. My first time bottling as usually use pressure barrel. My intention is to put it in a barrel then use a bottling stick. I thought the easiest way to sugar it was to put a sugar solution in the barrel, stir in well. However the kit (hammer of thor) says 150g for a barrel or 1 level teaspoon for 500ml bottles which would mean @ 5grms per bottle - 230grms for 46 bottles. Can anyone point me in the right direction please.

Hi Dave,

This could just be to make life easier for people? 150g works out at just over 6.5g per litre or 3.26g per 500ml bottle. A level teaspoon of sugar is 4g. I guess to be consistent you could add 0.8 level teaspoons of sugar to each bottle!

I’d say mix your 150g of sugar with some boiling water, pour it into your barrel, add the beer, and give it a stir but taking care not to be vigorous or you’ll introduce oxygen. That’s the job done until you come to bottle it. Now it gets more challenging because you may want to add more sugar but you don’t want a bottle bomb - are you using plastic (PET) bottles?

 

[Buffers brewery]

As you probably know, you can’t achieve the same level of carbonation in a pressure barrel as you can in a bottle as the PB has a pressure limit of around 15 psi whereas a bottle can exceed this. Probably why the kit specifies less sugar for the PB compared to the bottles.
I use PBs but keep 2 or 3 bottles from each brew as well. So like you I prime the barrel with sugar solution made with 4 ozs (110 grm) of white granulated sugar. NB. I put the sugar solution in the empty barrel before transferring the beer to help mixing. Having filled the barrel I then fill the bottles from the barrel. Interesting to note, with 4 ozs of sugar the PB pressure relief valve will vent at least once, sometimes twice, during carbonation. So my bottled beer ends up more carbonated than the barrelled beer with the same priming solution!

 

[Dave Spens]

Hi Dave,

This could just be to make life easier for people? 150g works out at just over 6.5g per litre or 3.26g per 500ml bottle. A level teaspoon of sugar is 4g. I guess to be consistent you could add 0.8 level teaspoons of sugar to each bottle!
Hi. Thanks for the response, I'm using
I’d say mix your 150g of sugar with some boiling water, pour it into your barrel, add the beer, and give it a stir but taking care not to be vigorous or you’ll introduce oxygen. That’s the job done until you come to bottle it. Now it gets more challenging because you may want to add more sugar but you don’t want a bottle bomb - are you using plastic (PET) bottles?

That sounds a lot to me, but I could be wrong. I am usually adding about 112g sugar to 19L (38 x 500mL bottles). On bottling day my approach is to transfer my beer from fermenter to bottling bucket. I boil the sugar needed in 100 mL water, cool it and add to the bottling bucket. Then I bottle using an auto syphon and bottling wand.

Hi that's exactly how I planned to do it, I was just thrown by the difference in the 2 wieghts

 

[Dave Spens]

Hi Dave,

This could just be to make life easier for people? 150g works out at just over 6.5g per litre or 3.26g per 500ml bottle. A level teaspoon of sugar is 4g. I guess to be consistent you could add 0.8 level teaspoons of sugar to each bottle!

I’d say mix your 150g of sugar with some boiling water, pour it into your barrel, add the beer, and give it a stir but taking care not to be vigorous or you’ll introduce oxygen. That’s the job done until you come to bottle it. Now it gets more challenging because you may want to add more sugar but you don’t want a bottle bomb - are you using plastic (PET) bottles?

Hi. Thanks for the response, I have the swing top style grolshe bottles