Cooper's Carb Drops

I haven't used them. But if your batch ended up uniformly undercarbonated it was either because you didn't use enough sugar, or something (unlikely) happened to kill or suppress your yeast before they finished. If the former, use more sugar. If the latter, switching to carb drops won't change anything. Here's one of several online calculators that make it simple to know how much sugar to use.

http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipator/carbonation.html

 

I'm surprised Saison isn't on there...

I had one other question. When calculating priming sugar isn't it a bit of a guess as to what your batch size will actually be when you are racking your bottling bucket? As far as the amount of trub, etc.

 

I guess it only matters if you if you are adding the sugar to the bottom of the bucket (which is how I've done it)

 

It's odd that it's not. I carbonate Saisons to at least 3.5 volumes, though if bottling, I'd probably cut back to 3.

After a couple batches, you should get a pretty good feel for how much you're losing when you rack. If it's a first batch, maybe figure on losing about a half gallon. YMMV.

 

Sweet. That thing will come in handy.

I might aim lower because I'm not very good at siphoning yet.

 

Being a rookie, having only brewed about 6 batches thus far, I have found them to be very useful. I do use the Cooper's brewing equipment and bottles, with both grain and lme brews. It takes the guess work out. My carbonation process takes place in the nylon lined bottles and I leave them to condition for about 2 weeks. The beer has been excellent, I cloned a recipe from a local brewery here to see if I could match what he did and got a very close result.

 

I have used Coopers drops with much success. Two drops per bomber worked very well. Very consistent results. These were used with Pale Ales and IPA's 6% abv and lower. My last batch I went with carb sugar and it took a few weeks longer to get good carbonation.

 

I prefer the Muntons carbonation tabs. You can add more or less tabs depending on your desired carbonation level.

 

Domino Dots® work just as well and are as easy to use as anyBrand carb drops at a fraction of the cost.

 

I have used them in the past and it produced varied results. But in their defense, I am TERRIBLE at bottling beer - I think I've had 1 or 2 batches that weren't over or under carbonated with the carb tabs and batch carbing.


Thank goodness kegs exist...