Hi all, I have two 4L batches in primary that I'll be bottling in a couple of weeks. I always batch prime my large scale brews but for a batch of this size I think it's overkill. I understand that there will be some trade off in consistency with bottle priming but it's my preferred route here. The carbonation drops look convenient but they are essentially overpriced sugar! For anybody else who is/has bottle primed, what's has worked for you? I have read some threads elsewhere that suggested 1/2 a teaspoon of table sugar per 12oz bottle worked well. The beers in question are a brown ale and a porter. Appreciate your thoughts. Cheers G
I'd still batch prime, just do the math to figure how much. It's quicker and in my experience better than adding Suger to every bottle.
Every drop is precious with a batch this small and I'll inevitably lose some when transferring. It's only going to be 12 bottles so it's personally no inconvenience to add sugar to each one.
Why not use one of the myriad of carbonation calculators that are available on line or within brewing software? Just specify the carbonation level you want*, the temperature, and the batch size (which will be 12 ounces). If you don't have a preference, my recommendations would be something like: English Brown Ale: 1.5 volumes (or a little higher if 1.5 seems scary low) American Brown Ale: 2.3 volumes Porter: 2.3 volumes
I would leave the teaspoon in the drawer and buy one of these (<$8, Amazon) and do exactly what @GormBrewhouse suggested.
I'm obviously a bit slow today! I didn't think any of the calculators would allow for inputting a batch size that minimal! Have found one and think I will go with that. Thanks for your help man
What it is about your transfer method that would cause you to lose significantly more volume than would be offset by the amount of boiled water used to make a priming solution? Not trying to dissuade you from bottle-priming but I might be missing something since I’ve never brewed less than 5-gallons.
You're point is actually a good one. To transfer I would be using a simple siphon with a bottle wand to avoid any splashing. I guess what I would lose would be minimal and there would likely be compensated by the volume of the solution.
I bottle directly from primary after dosing each bottle with a concentrated sugar solution. I use BrewCipher/one of the many online dosing calculators to figure out how much sugar I need, boil a solution that provides for 3 mL of solution for each bottle to be filled (with an extra bottle or two to make filling the syringe easier), and then use a syringe to dose each Star San'd bottle immediately before filling. I haven't had an issue with carbonation since switching to this method.
I like it! Just one more question - Is there any impact if you were using a mixture of different sized bottles e.g. 12oz & 22oz? Would you add slightly more for a 22oz than you would for a 12 oz?
Carbonate using left over wort. Unlike DME ... it's free! Unlike sugar ... it adds to the volume to be bottled!! Adding ~.27L of 1.069 wort to 4L @ 68°F gets you ~2.4 vols CO2. Speise https://www.brewersfriend.com/gyle-and-krausen-priming-calculator/
