So my friend bottled 3 gal of our 5 gal batch BEFORE I got back to the garage with our priming sugar solution. Left with no other choice, we tilted our bottling bucket and gently poured each bottle down the side of the bucket back into the remaining 2 gal of beer, mixed sugar in and bottled as usual. We were careful to not get any "glug-glug" action as we poured the bottles. How bad do you think the oxidation of this beer will be? I used 1/3 oz of hops at 5 min and 3/4 oz for whirlpool....
Honestly its hard to really know. The only thing you can do is drink them sooner rather than later, as oxidizing can take some time to become apparent. And for next time, this wouldn't be better from a consistency standpoint, but you also could have uncapped and added table sugar to each bottle. About a half a teaspoon per bottle is enough. The carbonation that way may be a little uneven bottle to bottle, but oxidation risks would be lowered. Just an alternative approach. Food for thought.
It happens. I racked to my bottling bucket, mixed in the priming sugar, then realized I didn't have any bottle caps. It was a Sunday so I couldn't run out to get more. Had to go to Walmart and get seltzer water in PET bottles. By the time I was actually ready to bottle, the yeast had already started doing their thing, so I ended up with an under-carbonated brown ale with a ton of sediment. I hate bottling. T-minus 3 months until I buy myself a kegging set up for Christmas.
After bottling once, I went straight to kegging. Found a fridge and corny on craigs list...haven't looked back since.
For future reference, a scant 1/4 tsp of table sugar per bottle will get you to where you need to be on most styles. It's a long road ahead either way, but I would have rather primed each bottle than sloshed them all back and forth. Worse things have happened on bottling day.
Thanks for all the responses. I tried the first one after only 4 days in the bottle, and to my surprise it was almost fully carbed! I'd say probably at 1.9 vol of CO2 (I primed for 2.55). Anyway, over the past 3 days I've been drinking them down very easily! One of the best beers I've ever made! At 7 days there's still no sign of oxidation... Yet. BTW... NZ hops are awesome!
This is why carbonation drops are useful. I did this once (well I've tried to do it multiple times, but caught myself every time but once). Grabbed some carb tabs and some more caps, did what had to be done. The beers were ok, tho I can't say this rating of "ok" was from the tabs or the fact that my recipe just wasn't that great. Probably the latter, although I wouldn't use n=1 on an uncertain recipe that I obviously screwed up as a basis to say bad things about carbonation tablets. These were the malt-based ones that taste like malted milk balls* *EXACTLY like them, lol, now we know what's in those candies, which btw I love
This actually turned out great! I had the last one last night, and I didn't notice any significant oxidation!
