I'm a noob when it comes to homebrewing...my second brew is fermenting and I could use a little advice. My first batch was a kit and recommended using honey to bottle condition, which was fine. But I don't want the flavor that came along with it. I am doing one gallon all grain batches and was thinking about using table sugar. I found a link to this http://tastybrew.com/calculators/priming.html and it says I should use 0.9oz of sucrose to get 2.52 vols of CO2. I am brewing an APA and am not sure how much water to dissolve it in or if this is even the right course of action. Should I be using the tablets I can get at the homebrew shop, or corn sugar, etc? Any help would be greatly appreciated! Cheers!
Table sugar is fine and general rule of thumb 1oz per gallon seems about right. Someone will be able to answer better than me, because my bottle conditioning was always a little inconsistent, but you could use a 1/4 cup or just enough to dissolve the sugar.
If you are brewing a 5 gallon kit and want more hop flavor to come through the beer I would use 1/3 cup table sugar and dissolve in 1 cup of boiled water. I find that using 2/3 of table sugar is way to carbed up and tickles your mouth .. doesnt let the hop flavors really come through. Of course that is my opinion. I always use table sugar to carb .. its fine.
Using that probably works great and you get the results you are looking for. But I do suggest weighing the sugar to get a more accurate carbonation.
I have had success with this priming calculator. I started using corn sugar but switched to table sugar. Old school wisdom that eschewed table sugar was a bunch of nonsense, in my opinion. It's cheaper and equally effective. Tablets might seem convenient (are they really? I never bothered with them), but I have two concerns. The first is that they may not be of consistent mass and therefore don't give bottle to bottle consistency -- this might be dismissed if you have an excellent balance that finds they are of a consistent mass. The second and not easily dismissed concern is that you cannot adjust CO2 volume in a continuous way. You get one tablets worth of volume, two tablets worth of volume, etc. The reality is that some styles might want 3/4 of a tablet, some might want 1.15 tablets, etc. So, use the priming calculator, weigh out the sugar, boil the sugar in a cup or so of water (maybe less if doing 1 gallon batches), add to beer in bottling bucket, give it a few gentle stirs with a sanitized spoon, cover the bucket, wait 10-15 minutes for the sugar concentration gradients to equilibrate (probably overkill, with the gentle stirring, but you waited weeks to bottle this stuff and you'll wait weeks to drink it -- what's 15 minutes?). Bottle.
I agree with the other posters in this case. Honey is not necessary, I use corn sugar and a priming calculator. I use the one from northern brewer's website and have had no carbonation issues. Also invest in a digital scale for precise measuring, you'll be glad you did if you haven't already.
Thanks for all the suggestions! I do have a digital scale and will likely go with the .9oz (25.5g) of table sugar in about 1/2 to 2/3 cup water for this batch.
