Carbonating

[Goose]

Hi All,

I am very new to all of this. I finished and bottled my first Mr. Beer brew just from the included instructions. I was in such a hurry to finish a batch while my mom was visiting that I even used tap water.

Everything went smooth up until the carbonation. I used granulated sugar (again, I had not even searched for a great place like this for help) and bottled in the included PET bottles. Caps screwed on tight. The bottles did become "rock hard" and then I refrigerated on bottle to try the next day.

Not much carbonation, but was able to tell it had fizz. I wated a few more days and put a couple of more bottles in the fridge. When I went to get them out, the bottles were no loner hard and the beer was flat as a blown out tire.

Two more bottles went in and same result...one other bottle went to the fridge and came out 24 hours later rock solid. Again, all the bottles were put in the fridge rock solid and 4 of the 6 came out soft and flat.

I know I rushed things and all but still I find this puzzling. I made sure the caps were on tight when I put the bottles in the fridge.

Any suggestions? I also have a new batch of wheat that I still used the booster stuff for that has been in the keg for 3 weeks. I am getting ready to bottle it but can't seem to find corn sugar anywhere where I live in Murrieta, CA.

Thanks in advance and thanks for this wonderful site!

[Mill Rat]

CO2 dissolves more readily in cold water (which is >90% of your beer) than warm water. If you have a bottle of beer at room temperature and drop it to food fridge temp, the gas pressure will drop by over half. That's why your bottles went soft, the gas moved into the liquid.

Second item is stirring. The sugar you add needs to be well mixed into the beer before you bottle. If it isn't, you'll get variable carbonation between the bottles. Hell, if you hadn't got to that first one quick, it could've blown up on you if poor mixing was your problem.

Third item is patience. Yeast doesn't read calendars or recipe instructions. You cannot help but let the yeast do its work on its own time. The key to being able to be patient with your beer is to have several in process so you always have something ready to drink. That way if one brew is taking it's own sweet time, you're not dry.We call it filling the pipeline here.

[Goose]

Hi Mil Rat,

Thanks for the reply....

Mixing...I am fairly certain I mixed the surgar well. I shook the bottles vigorously and no undisolved surgar could be seen...

Gas into cold solutions...I thouht about that too, but once opened wouldn't I have seen and to me more importantly feel the fizz in the beer? It was totally flat like beer flavored water.

Patience....yea this was a make it fast batch since it was a present from my mom and she was visiting we wanted to at least try it. We knew it would not be optimal.

My next batch is on week three in fermentation...I will bottle it this weekend. I will then make a batch using two HME's instead of one and the booster....

[nelstrodomus]

Boo boo on shaking the bottles "vigorously" after adding the table sugar. This will completely oxidize the beer and thus make it stale very very fast. After adding sugar to naturally carbonate beer, it needs to be gently rocked back and forth without real agitation.

Also, it's best to use some type of bottle bucket with a spigot where you can add the sugar to the entire batch and lightly mix until completely dissolved, fyi, also use corn sugar instead of table sugar.

I too started the way you did, and never really had good results with Mr. Beer, so, hundreds of dollars later I'm doing 10 gal batches and haven't had a single issue since Mr. Beer, (I'm not knocking them they get a lot of people into brewing which is great).

Keep brewing, nothing is worse than pouring out a batch down the drain after all the work and expectations, but it happens...

[stsbrew]

My Beer with the Mr. Beer kit always had an apple cider after taste from the white sugar. I didn't like a single thing that came out of it but it got me started.

[coffeeshop]

Ditto on the shaking...point to remember for next time.

If you have a homebrew supply shop near you, (or you can just order online), get some corn sugar. (this is what works well for me). A good ballpark range to use is 3/4-ounce to 1 ounce of corn sugar per gallon of beer to start with; you can always increase A LITTLE for future batches.

Boil 1/2 cup to a cup of water, dissolve the sugar, let cool and then add to your beer before bottling it. This ensures that it's distrbuted evenly and prevents contamination. Then bottle as usual.

You can also use carbonation tablets, but I don't like the risk of contamination from them. Either way though, you'll get more uniform carbonation from bottle to bottle. Cheers!

[darylM]

i do that but i wait about an hour before bottling to make sure the sugar has circulated enough. Is that needed?

[Carl Spakler]

i do that but i wait about an hour before bottling to make sure the sugar has circulated enough. Is that needed?

If you mean you wait an hour after racking the beer on top of the priming liquid I don't know that it is necessary and may just add time for an airborne nasty to get into your beer or oxidization to begin.

I dissolve and boil my priming sugar, let it cool then add it to the bottling bucket, on top of that I rack then bottle right away. IMO this distributes the sugar throughout the beer evenly enough. I've yet to have a bottle to bottle carbonation issue; the only carbonation issue I ever had was due to not waiting long enough. :)

[Old CW4]

I've done a dozen or so 5 gal batches since beginning homebrewing last year. I've tried three methods of carbonation. (1) Adding a teaspooon of corn sugar to each bottle as I'm bottling. Works well but is tedious. I used a clean, dry funnel inserted into the bottle's neck and poured in the sugar. (2) The method I use most often is as stated above---add five to six ounces of corn sugar dissolved in water, swirl in gently, and bottle. This gives great results. (3) My local supermarket sells dry ice for fifty cents a half pound. I put the chunk of dry ice in a clean towel and smack it a few times with the flat of a hammer, then open the towel and pick out approximately equal and marble sized bits of dry ice. Pop these into each half liter bottle and cap. Puts in the CO2 in a hurry.

[unkle bik]

I have found on a gram-per-gram basis, cane sugar carbonates more readily than corn sugar. A 2/3 cup will do when 3/4 cup of corn sugar is needed.

[jonlouisville77]

Has anyone here ever tried light corn syrup (Kayro) for priming sugar? The list of ingredients on the back says "pure corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, water, natural flavorings". The "pure corn syrup" is, presumably, 100% dextrose. The HFCS is a disaccharide of fructose and dextrose that would not ferment completely, like table sugar, and could possibly leave a slight sweet or cidery taste. The "natural flavorings", I believe are simply salt and vanilla, and I doubt if they would alter the beer noticably.

I think corn syrup would work almost undistinguishably from regular dry corn sugar because it is probably at least 80% dextrose anyway (discounting the added water). The "pure corn syrup" is listed first and is likely to be more than half of the total product. While the HFCS could be as much as 90% fructose, it is much more likely that the HFCS is either 42% or 55% fructose.

What about molasses, sorgham or dark corn syrup? How do they behave as fermentables or as priming sugars? Sorgham is basically UME isn't it?

[jonlouisville77]

I just did a little research on sorghum. It is actually the stalk, not the fruit or grain of the sorghum plant that the juice comes from to make syrup. Never the less, I'm sure it would make an interesting experiment to brew with some.

[corkybstewart]

Has anyone here ever tried light corn syrup (Kayro) for priming sugar? The list of ingredients on the back says "pure corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, water, natural flavorings". The "pure corn syrup" is, presumably, 100% dextrose. The HFCS is a disaccharide of fructose and dextrose that would not ferment completely, like table sugar, and could possibly leave a slight sweet or cidery taste. The "natural flavorings", I believe are simply salt and vanilla, and I doubt if they would alter the beer noticably.

I think corn syrup would work almost undistinguishably from regular dry corn sugar because it is probably at least 80% dextrose anyway (discounting the added water). The "pure corn syrup" is listed first and is likely to be more than half of the total product. While the HFCS could be as much as 90% fructose, it is much more likely that the HFCS is either 42% or 55% fructose.

What about molasses, sorgham or dark corn syrup? How do they behave as fermentables or as priming sugars? Sorgham is basically UME isn't it?
My advice is to use sugar-preferably corn, but table sugar will do-instead of all these other priming ideas. There's really no way to nail down the fermentability of all these other substance so you're just stabbing wildly in the dark as to how much to use for proper carbonation. Use these other sugars for flavoring your beer, but not for priming. The only thing you really want your priming sugar to do is create consistent CO2 levels in your bottles.
I would stay away from processed stuff like corn syrup, I bet there are lots of preservatives to keep that stuff from fermenting in the bottle so it probably won't carbonate your beer.

[jonlouisville77]

I'm definately going to prime some of the bottles with sterilized corn syrup just to see how it works. Since it has a significantly higher dextrose content than table sugar, I believe it will work better. Dry corn dextrose is harder for me to obtain. I have to either drive a long way, or buy it online, in which case I have to pay for shipping. I've also considered trying D50W, which is IV grade dextrose (glucose) for diabetics. I can get it cheaply and it is already in a sterile and liquid form. This is D50, not D5. 50% dextrose and 50% water.

This forum is an excellent learning tool for me. I love the DIY experience of brewing your own, and a big part of that is improvising and coming up with creative solutions. At the same time, I don't want to make mistakes by trying stupid experiments that someone else has already found doesn't work.

[BrewDog]

watch out for preservatives in the syrup. that will kill your yeast and leave you with flat beer.

[jonlouisville77]

There are no preservatives in it, other than the sugars themselves. There is a fractional amount of salt and vanilla in it, but probably not near enough to affect taste or yeast growth. The problem is estimating the water in the corn syrup solution. The company won't tell me what it is because they say it's proprietary information. I promised them that I didn't want to steal their corn syrup recipe, but they didn't believe me.

[jonlouisville77]

The light corn syrup worked pretty well. No off flavors or anything that I could detect. I had estimated 9 fl oz LCS for priming 5 gallons of beer at 68 degrees F, (3.25 volumes of CO). It may have been a little low because I wasn't able to get an exact on the H2O percentage in the syrup. Next time I'll use at least 12 fl oz.