Bulk aging / bottling

[croc4]

I was wondering if you had to adjust the amount of corn sugar for priming if you bottled in larger containers than the standard 12oz bottles.
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[jsmurphy]

I'm a newbie at this, but seems to me if you use the correct ratio for the amount of your total brew, then the size of the bottle shouldn't matter.

[croc4]

Sounds reasonable, but I ask because I have read some where that when kegging you don't need as much to carbonate as you would if bottling. Maybe that is because of forced carbonation?
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[Tweek]

If you force carbonate you dont need any primer. And if you keg you should just force carbonate. regardless of what people say you should not be able to taste the diference other than you may over or under carbonated with priming sugar, and you wil be able to hit perfect carbonation on the head with force carbonation. Before people jump on this and tell me I am wrong please go out and try for yourself and tell me what you think.

[Fast_Eddy]

I agree whole heartedly - force carb is consistently better.

[MagTheGrate]

CO2 = CO2

it doesn't matter where it comes from. Either from a tank or from yeast eating sugar it's the same chemical. 1 carbon and 2 Oxygens.

-Mag

[wortchillergoal]

Sorry if I missed it but the answer to the question is you prime base on total volume not the size of the container and priming rates are different for kegging.

[Beerconnoisseur]

You shouldn't need to adjust the amount of corn sugar based on bottle sizes, because, assuming the sugar dissolves evenly, the volume of sugar-dissolved-in-beer will be proportionate to the size of the container it's in. This should be close enough for most purposes. If you are adamant about fine-tuning carbonation, then you can switch to Prime Tabs for bottling until you find the magic number that works great for your beer.

On the kegging side, you have 3 basic options:

1) Treat the keg as one damn big bottle. You add the priming sugar, and let the yeast convert it to CO2. Simple, but the first few glass can be cloudy with sugar/yeast, and may need to be tossed. Also, you are relying on the yeast to do the carbonating for you, and like most organisms, it may feel like cooperating to varying degrees, or then again, it might not. ;)

2) Force carbonate the keg. You pressurize your keg, then shake it back and forth to dissolve the CO2, and serve. Advantage is you get carbonation right away; disadvantage is you have no way to measure how much CO2 actually went into solution.

3) Keep the keg under CO2 pressure, at cold temperature. When you do this, the CO2 will gradually be absorbed into the beer, and if you plan on aging it anyway, then this is a good route to go.

Once your beer is in a keg, you can use a counter-pressure bottle filler to fill bottles, if desired. Then you won't need to worry about priming sugar for the bottles...

[YamahaXS]

Brewing is half art, half religion, and half science.


I have read in more than one place, by reputable experts, that kegs require LESS priming fermentables. I have also read that you can use the same amt.


I tend to think that you should be able to use less sugar because you should have less air space per beer volume in kegging, than in a bottles. Therefore you should need less co2, and less sugar.

just my 2 cents!

EDIT: Oh, and I don't believe there is any significant difference b/t forcing and priming.

[Fast_Eddy]

Originally posted by Beerconnoisseur

2) ....disadvantage is you have no way to measure how much CO2 actually went into solution.



It's very well understood how much CO2 will go into solution if a liquid is at a certain temperature under a certain pressure. For each brew I make I can very accurately control the total carbonation(read carbonate to style) by consulting a chart that is representative of that fact. Right now I have a wheat that is very carbonated and a scotch ale that is more akin to cask conditioned(CO2-wise) and they were both carbonated using forced carbonation.

My $.02 worth.