First homebrew/Hefeweizen questions

@VolMD, below are two threads worth reading:

http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/broke-my-first-fermenter.372953/

http://www.beeradvocate.com/communi...nightmare-lesson-learned-the-hard-way.374565/

Cheers!

 

After you read the horror stories, read this for a bit of perspective.

http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/glass-carboy-injury-poll.131554/

 

You are most welcome. At the 'end of the day' you should select a primary fermenter that best suits your needs and comfort level.

One of the sayings I post on these forums is: "Brew the beers you like and brew them the way you like." The beauty of homebrewing is that you get to do and choose things that you like.

Cheers!

 

Priming sugar calculator for bottling -

http://www.northernbrewer.com/priming-sugar-calculator/

 

@Brew_Betty's calculator link will get you the info that you want. If you are a couple cups short of 5 gallons then you can boil your priming sugar in this amount of water to make up for the difference. (If needed, add a little more extra water to replace a little bit of your beer that you'll leave behind in your fermentor due to trub at the bottom.)

Making a sugar solution is the way to go about adding the sugar because it will dissolve more easily into your beer before bottling. Add this solution to the bottom of your bucket and siphon your beer on top of it. Once the beer is in your bottling bucket, stir it gently without splashing so that the sugar solution gets well dispersed in the beer. Otherwise you could have some bottles with more sugar than others, and these have the potential to be gushers. (Some bottles will also be flat if the sugar was not well mixed.) For a 5-gallon batch I also like to stir a few times during the bottling process because that sugar syrup is heavier than your beer and will continually try to settle out. Allow the bottles to condition at whatever temp they fermented, or 70-72 is okay too. After two weeks you should have carbonated beer. Then you can chill them.

 

I'm interested in this as well, as I'll be brewing a Bavarian Hefeweizen this weekend and I am also finding a lot of discrepancies with how much to use. Typical carbonation levels for this style are between 3.3-4.5 volumes of CO2. I'll be storing the bottles at around 68F after bottling. Using a few different calculators, I'm getting between 7.0-8.5 oz of corn sugar but that seems high to me. Is that correct? Am I targeting too high of a carbonation level? I've never used more than 5 oz of corn sugar for a 5 gal batch before. What are other people's experiences with their own hefeweizens?

 

What are you entering for beer volume (gallons)?

Commercial German brewed Hefeweizen beers tend to be highly carbonated and the German versions tend to use heavy duty glass bottles. If you want to achieve higher carbonation levels (e.g., 3.5ish volumes of CO2) you will need to use large(r) amounts of priming sugar. Just make sure you have heavy duty bottles if you are going for that level of carbonation.

Cheers!

 

I agree; read my post above.

Cheers!

 

3vols of CO2 is about the highest amount to safely use with regular bottles.

That's 5.77g of corn sugar or 5.25g or regular sugar for 5 gallons. It will be plenty fizzy.

I'd use 2.8vols of CO2 just to be on the safe side.

 

I was entering 5 gal. I will be using 500 ml swing-top bottles that are made of pretty thick glass. Even so, I don't want to run the risk of overcarbing. Sounds like 5 oz of corn sugar will work out just fine.

 

That sounds good to me.

Cheers!

 

Correction. Unit typos.

oz not g