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One Teaspoon is one Carbonation drop?


Anthony999

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24 minutes ago, Beerlust said:

https://www.northernbrewer.com/pages/priming-sugar-calculator

Enter the details in the four categories, & the calculator will spit out suggested weights to achieve your desired carbonation level over a wide variety of priming sugars.

Cheers,

Lusty.

Thanks that is interesting although it seems to be more oriented to bulk priming. On the other hand it does indicate the amounts of sugars relative to each other.

I'm also guessing that the terminology may vary a little from the US to Australia. Thus, what is brown sugar in America could mean raw sugar in Australia where brown sugar to us is a much finer, darker dense product.

Still, food for thought.

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PS I guess I could try a variety of sugars  along the lines of:

One 330ml bottle would normally need around 1 teaspoon of sucrose (or one carb drop). The calculator suggested 60.19g of sucrose for the random volume I selected (2.91 gallons).

The calculator suggested I used 70.  g if I used maple syrup. Therefore if I was to use maple syrup then I'm thinking that I should use 77.72/60.19 = 1.29g of maple syrup or close enough to 1 and 1/3 teaspoons.

Not sure I would want to use honey but at 80.02g as suggested above that works out to 1.35g.

Black Treacle? Molasses? 

I'm thinking that each country has different names and perhaps 'strengths' of these sugars so it still could be a bit of a lucky dip.

Does anyone think it is worth the effort to experiment with different sugars?

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It would work out properly if you divided the total sugar amount by the number of bottles 2.91 gallons would fill, not dividing the amount of maple syrup or honey or whatever by the amount of sucrose. All that tells you is if you use maple syrup for instance, you need to use 1.29 times the amount of sucrose to achieve the same carbonation level.

2.91 US gallons is about 11 litres and would fill about thirty 330mL stubbies (33 actually). 77.72÷30 = 2.59, not 1.29 per bottle. 60 is obviously 2g per bottle of going on 30 bottles, slightly less for 33. 

Both of those are lower than the usual 3g that a carb drop equates to. It's probably basing it on a lower CO2 volume and/or a lower temperature than it should be. 

Edited by Otto Von Blotto
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9 hours ago, Otto Von Blotto said:

It would work out properly if you divided the total sugar amount by the number of bottles 2.91 gallons would fill, not dividing the amount of maple syrup or honey or whatever by the amount of sucrose. All that tells you is if you use maple syrup for instance, you need to use 1.29 times the amount of sucrose to achieve the same carbonation level.

2.91 US gallons is about 11 litres and would fill about thirty 330mL stubbies (33 actually). 77.72÷30 = 2.59, not 1.29 per bottle. 60 is obviously 2g per bottle of going on 30 bottles, slightly less for 33. 

Both of those are lower than the usual 3g that a carb drop equates to. It's probably basing it on a lower CO2 volume and/or a lower temperature than it should be. 

Yes the maths is interesting and it does seem too low when you do the division by volume. 

I just put in the gallons being the conversion from 11 litres and put the temp down as 18 c converted to Fahrenheit. The othe input is the volume of CO2 (which I don’t understand) but it had a drop down where you could put type of beer - I chose an American IPA  

I always thought that a carb drop was about a teaspoon which in sucrose is about 5g  

 

  

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I used to just go by taste rather than muck around with all these numbers. I used a calculation to work out a starting point then just adjusted it each batch until I found the amount I liked. However, I was bulk priming not dosing bottles individually. When I did use figures though I didn't use volumetric measurements for weight. It makes no sense to me because the same volume of different things weighs different amounts. It's like saying mix the kit with a litre of dry malt.

Carb drops are equal to about 3g, which equates to an 8g/L priming rate. I don't know how empty or full to fill a teaspoon to get 3g, the proper measuring spoons are better for that.

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54 minutes ago, Otto Von Blotto said:

Carb drops are equal to about 3g, which equates to an 8g/L priming rate. I don't know how empty or full to fill a teaspoon to get 3g, the proper measuring spoons are better for that.

8g/L I actually found to be too much generally.  I've just finished priming a batch with sugar cubes.  The ones I used are 4.5g.    One cube per 750ml bottle i.e. 6g/L is for me just about right for most beers I brew.    😎

Oh, and much cheaper than carb drops too!

Edited by BlackSands
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4 hours ago, BlackSands said:

8g/L I actually found to be too much generally.  I've just finished priming a batch with sugar cubes.  The ones I used are 4.5g.    One cube per 750ml bottle i.e. 6g/L is for me just about right for most beers I brew.    😎

Oh, and much cheaper than carb drops too!

As it turns out the measurer that I have turns out to be 3g and 6g. In general my swing top 330ml bottles have been pretty well carbed with 3g while the 740ml bottles with a 6g addition have been a bit disappointing. 

But you say you are happy with only 4.5g per 740ml bottle. 

Edited by DonPolo
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It's a lot to do with personal taste. Everyone likes different carbonation levels. I like my pale ales and lagers reasonably high but other styles I like lower. 

I can't really do a lot with kegs without buying more regulators but I don't brew a lot of lowly carbed styles anyway. Stouts and porters tend to carbonate lower on the same gas pressure anyway so I don't even do anything different and they're great.

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2 hours ago, DonPolo said:

But you say you are happy with only 4.5g per 740ml bottle. 

Yeah, that's around 2.5 Vols CO2 -  that's generally enough fizz for me.    The two saison's I brewed this Summer I primed at 2.8 vols which is as high as I go (7g / 750ml).   One thing I don't like about many commercial 'mega-swill' beers is that I actually find them hard to swill because of the high carbonation!  Though I guess one advantage of that is that I drink less 😁    

There's a craft brewery nearby that serves traditional English ales carb'd at less than 2 Vols CO2 - that's the equivalent of around 3g / 750ml.  That in contrast was a bit too flat for my taste.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I was wondering in a very similar vein. If you are supposed to use one carbonation drop for a small bottle and two for the larger bottle is one being over carbonated or the other under carbonated?

By that I mean, a lot of the 'small bottles' these days are 330ml and the recommendation is that we use one carbonation drop which is approximately 3g sugar. Two carbonation drops however is the recommendation for a 740ml Coopers 'long neck' PET bottle. Obviously the PET bottle is more beer than 2 x 330ml.

So is the 330ml bottle being over carbonated or is the 740ml PET bottle being under carbonated.

This may explain why when I use 330ml glass bottles and 740 ml PET bottles for the same brew, it is the glass bottles that seem to carbonate and hold a head the better.

OK I realise that back in the day the usual size for 'stubbies' et al was 375ml and the 3g carbonation drop was appropriate. 

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On 3/13/2019 at 11:57 PM, Otto Von Blotto said:

When I started I used a variety of stubbies ranging from 330-375 mL with a couple of sizes in between, one drop in all of them. I don't remember them being vastly different in carbonation level. Maybe a little but not enough to worry about. 

Hmm the mystery continues.

I opened a 330ml swing top of my 'kit and LDM kilo + raw sugar' APA last night after the obligatory two weeks carbing and then and two days in the fridge and it was pretty good I have to say. Not the creamiest head but creamy enough. 

I will open a PET tonight or tomorrow night and see if there is any noticeable difference in carbonation.

PS - The process of using a Galaxy hop tea with leaving the bag for the whole fermentation seemed to work. Strongish 'passionfruity' Galaxy flavours but seemed well balanced by the maltiness.  The hop flavour may have been a bit 'grassy' I'm not sure because I don't have a lot of experience picking those flavours but whatever it was, it was not unpleasant at all. So I'm going to say it was a 'Galaxy taste' rather than grassy.

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41 minutes ago, Otto Von Blotto said:

I daresay you would have gotten that flavour without leaving the bag in the fermenter the whole time too. Those flavours are extracted by making the hop tea.

Probably ta. In the second brew where I used the same recipe but some of the yeast cake, I did a 15 minute hop tea with some galaxy, citra and centennial but didn't leave the bags in; just squeezed them into the brew and left it at that. Will see how it turns out.

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  • 1 year later...

So didn't want to fire up a new thread seen as this one was here already.

Recently did a basic pale with BE2 and a bulk prime @8g p/l . Is carbed enough for me, laces the glass well, but minimal head, but it stays around. (Poured in headmaster glass)

Tried a Cooper's green can today (poured into the same headmaster glass) and it rolls around with plenty of carbonation.

My mate who brews the same uses anywhere up to 300g dextrose 13g P/l and ends up with the same result (if not a bit too much)

So for a direct copy (or close enough) try 8g and above P/L. 

Have people found the green cans carb more than the stubbies?

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