Y'all like heroin? JK. With two batches, I've added priming sugar to individual bottles with these (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007Y8230G?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o09_s00). I'm doing it so I can siphon straight from the fermenter and not risk infection from transferring to a bottling bucket. Doesn't it seem smarter/safer to cut out a step? Point being, both have turned out awfully oxidized and a really rank medicinal flavor. I boil sugar in water, let cool, pull solution into a syringe and squirt into empty bottles before filling from a bottling cane. Bottles are cleaned and sanitized, syringes are cleaned and sanitized. Is it the syringes? Or you need to know more about my process?
Medicinal off notes are often the result of using water that contains chlorine or chloramine. Brita probably removes most of the chlorine. Chloramine is harder to remove. Using a very small amount of campden tablet in the water would remove all the leftover chlorine and chloramine. 1 tablet treats 20 gallons of water. If it's an infection, brett can make medicinal notes, but you would see a higher than expected degree of attenuation. Are your beers finishing at 1.004 when they are supposed to finish at 1.010?
The latest one did not finish low but the saison was around 1.000 (back in August). Used a White Labs California in the latest and, the latter, their "Platinum" saison strain. If it's brett there, I suppose I could confuse medicinal and particularly tart. I'll pick up some campdens, in case. If it's not chlorine, will those hurt anything?
Medicinal off notes are usually easy to notice in the aroma and they can affect the flavor. Bandaid, plastic, clean garbage bag, chloroseptic throat spray. It doesn't produce anything tart. Tart comes from anything that makes lactic or acetic acid.
There is no good reason to pick up an infection in a bottling bucket because you already know how to sanitize stuff, right? Furthermore, you are at a point where even if your beer were exposed to an infection agent, the post fermentation environment protects your beer from it. I think you are worrying about something you shouldn't and passing up on a tried and true method of bottling. It ain't broke, so don't fix it.
I played around a little with a 60 ml syringe when working on my sours. I inoculated with lacto by using a syringe to try to prevent splashing. It worked well. Anwway, I think so long as you know how many ml of water you have to dilute your sugar you should be in good shape. Just take notes and make sure you are getting good results. Make adjustments as you need to get more or less bubbles. As for the chlorine, I always used campden with any tap water I use in my brewing process. As for priming bottles, I always had best luck adding the priming sugar last. I use Star San and I get a lot of bubbles that come out of the bottle before I'm done filling. I don't want ANY of that to be priming sugar. The sugar goes in last and is always consistent this way. Cheers!
It seems you are unnecessarily adding more work to the process of bottling. Racking the secondary to a pail or stockpot with the priming sugar works fine with basic techniques to avoid splashing.
