On my second batch of home brew I made a red ale then split into three secondaries for treatment (Peach, Rum Soaked Oak Chips, and Hibiscus.) When it came time to bottle I added the 5 oz bag of priming sugar to boiling water and used a priming sugar calculator then pulled that much water with priming sugar out... I realized that the sugar calculator was telling me amount of just sugar. So now my beer is bottled, but without enough priming sugar since I measured after adding to water. Any ideas of what I should do to fix?
Ever wonder why priming sugar comes in 4-5 oz bags? Was your first batch carbonated? About the only thing you can do now is uncap and put in the remainder of the sugar solution after boiling and cooling again. I'd keep the next batch simple until you get the basics down correctly...good luck If you haven't read Palmer's How To Brew, it will save on a lot of "ah, shits"
Thanks GreenKrusty101. I was wondering why I wasn't using so much of the 5 mixture, but the first batch I did with the entire bag for 5 gallons was over carbonated... I still have two other batches that I kept simple (a 2.5 and 5 gallon.) A local shop said I could put some candy in each bottle, like sour patch. I don't want the flavor to affect it. They also have some drops of sorts you can put in each bottle after uncapping to carbonate (flavorless.) They also said wait a week for the sugars that already are in there to carbonate... Just looking for options.
How long has the beer been in the bottles? You're kind of in a Catch-22 situation because the sugar that you put in may have already been consumed, but maybe only part of it so far, or maybe none yet if you bottled today. You are essentially in a position to wait for the minimal carbonation to occur from the sugar that you already added, then uncap the bottles and let it escape at the same time that you add more sugar to get the correct carbonation level. It's kind of a crap shoot as to how much sugar has been consumed so that you can add just the right amount and avoid over-carbonation.
I would be very skeptical of any suggestions from that shop if I were you. Adding candy to a bottled beer for carbonation purposes is beyond dumb. Just to be clear, not calling you dumb, calling the employee and the store that employs him dumb.
You wacky Floridians. Get some software, or get some online reference to get your ratios and weights for sugars right. I'd wait a week though before getting involved with what you've already put down so that the sugars in there already will have been worked on. You might be fine by then too.
If you want to go to the trouble, put your bottles in a cooler to bring the temps down just above freezing. The lower the temps, the greater the solubility of CO2 (less will be in the headspace, waiting to escape when you do an upcoming step). Meanwhile, calculate just how much sugar you failed to add to your beers and add 10%. (That number is guess to compensate for CO2 loss in an upcoming step. It could be 20%. I don't know). Dissolve this amount of sugar in the smallest amount of boiling water you can, like maybe half a cup? Now divide this volume by the number of beers you need to re-prime. That's how much liquid you are going to need to add to each bottle. You will probably want to estimate, using a medicine dropper. Carefully remove one bottle from the cooler at a time and act quickly. Gently pry off the cap, add your priming, and re-crimp the cap. You'll probably need a few new caps on hand to use in case the re-crimped caps don't want to seal. Or better yet use new caps. Once recapped, set the beer aside and move on to the next bottle. Allow bottles to warm up to room temp. There will still be live yeast present to carbonate, but give them several weeks. BTW, what's with these newbie brewers adding peach, rum-soaked oak, and hibiscus to their beers, but not knowing how to bottle prime? Learn to walk before you run, you know?
Cooling the bottles reduces the CO2 pressure in both the beer and in the headspace. So there's no new pressure in the headspace to force more CO2 into solution. Or put another way, the pressures trying to push CO2 into the beer are still balanced against the pressures trying push it out (in the sealed bottle). The reason less CO2 will escape in the upcoming step is that the pressure in the cold beer is closer to atmospheric pressure than it was when it was warm.
