Table sugar equivalent of Coopers carb drops

[Greg B]

Hello all

I can't seem to find a straight answer to this one so thought I'd come and ask the experts.

For my first ever brew I used a Coopers Canadian Blonde kit and primed with Coopers carb drops. I used a mixture of 1.5 drops and 2 drops per 500ml flip top bottle. I much preferred the fizz from the 2 drops.

Now onto my second brew and I'm going to try bulk priming using bog standard white granulated beet sugar. The question is, how much do I use?

If a 250g bag of drops contains 60 drops then each drop is 4.3g. So 2 drops is 8.6g.

I'll prime 20 litres ready for 40 500ml bottles, so I calculate 8.6g x 40 to be 344g.

Now, if I use a priming sugar calculator or other suggestions on forums and in books, the suggestion is more towards 150g-200g.

What am I missing here?

 

[kelper]

a teaspoon in a 500ml bottle or 90g in a PB works for me. Don't the kit instructions specify the amount of sugar if you are not using their expensive magic drops?

 

[Drunkula]

344g of sugar would get you over 5 volumes of co2. That's insane and with standard beer bottles bordering on dangerous as champagne has 6 volumes and look at the bottles they use for that.

Go for 140g as that's still 2.6 volumes which is high for a beer.

 

[terrym]

The Blond kit is a sort of lagery type beer. So I suggest you should carb to go for 2.2-2.7 vols according to the BF calculator, which is between 125 and 170 g of table sugar for 23 litres. If you like fizzy beer and serve cold go to the top end of the range.

 

[Greg B]

a teaspoon in a 500ml bottle or 90g in a PB works for me. Don't the kit instructions specify the amount of sugar if you are not using their expensive magic drops?

Thanks. No sadly not, they just specify the number of drops

 

[Greg B]

344g of sugar would get you over 5 volumes of co2. That's insane and with standard beer bottles bordering on dangerous as champagne has 6 volumes and look at the bottles they use for that.

Go for 140g as that's still 2.6 volumes which is high for a beer.

Thanks.

So what is wrong with my theory as I had no issues with 2 drops in a 500ml bottle. Is it that the drops are not sucrose and in fact a glucose/sucrose mix?

 

[Greg B]

The Blond kit is a sort of lagery type beer. So I suggest you should carb to go for 2.2-2.7 vols according to the BF calculator, which is between 125 and 170 g of table sugar for 23 litres. If you like fizzy beer and serve cold go to the top end of the range.

Thanks for the advice