A customer just sent us a note asking about why we recommend 1.5 cups of corn sugar for bottling on our recipes when many others say 3/4 cup or 1 cup.  Carbonation levels vary by style of beer.  They also vary by personal taste.  So determining the “right” number is a difficult thing to do.  Since we largely support beginning and early stage brewers here at One Hour Brewing, we have posted recipes that are going to be good from the first try.  We also have posted sugar levels that are likely to please on the first try.  So here’s the general logic behind the numbers.

Most people who are getting into brewing expect to refrigerate their beer.  Many brewers prefer cellar temperature, but it’s fairly safe to say that most beginning brewers are putting their beer in the fridge.  Personally I like some beers at cellar temperature and some at fridge temperature, but that’s another topic.  So for now assuming that we intend to refrigerate finalized bottles (after carbonation) we need to get a level of carbonation that will withstand the lower temperature.  That means a higher level.  We have been quite disappointed with the level of carbonation in some beers at that temperature using less sugar.  Trial and error has shown that 1.5 cups works well for this for many recipes.

Style plays a huge part in how carbonated a beer should be.  A flat hefeweizen or a highly carbonated English ale, for example would not be as pleasant as one would expect.  Hence there is no “right” number for all recipes.  The recipes we have posted so far tend to be style where decent carbonation is required.

The final variable in the equation is how long you let the bottles sit before drinking.  A longer bottling period will allow smaller amount of sugar to ferment completely and generate a good level of carbonation.  Drinking within a few weeks of brewing, however, may not allow that to happen, and the higher sugar level will get better results more quickly.  That is not to say that you will have hugely over-carbonated bottles later on, but it is to say that it helps early on.

Lastly, that number is not enough to damage bottles in our long experience.  We have had glass bottles sitting for several years at this level without any difficulty whatsoever.

As always we’re aiming for the best experience for people using our instructions and recipes.  Let us know if you have feedback!

Having just been on the topic of bottling, this seems like a good time to address the age old question about which base to use for priming your bottles, corn sugar, or dry malt extract?  There are, of course, other sugars that people use for this purpose, including molasses, table sugar, brown sugar, priming drops from various manufacturers, and a whole lot more.  But the two main staples are the two in the title of this post: corn sugar and dry malt extract (DME).  To understand which is better for your purpose, you need to understand what you’re doing when priming.

Bottled conditioned beers are carbonated by the gas produced by a final stage of fermentation.  The yeast is given some sugar to eat, it produces carbon dioxide, and the close confines of the bottle force the carbon dioxide into suspension in the liquid since there is nowhere else for it to go.  We’re not trying to change the taste of the beer here, nor produce more alcohol (though a little is formed).  The chief concern is getting the yeast to efficiently generate carbon-dioxide, while not affecting the high quality of our beer.

So lets analyze corn sugar and dry malt extract for that purpose alone, initially.  Corn sugar is made of simple sugar, all of which is fermentable.  There is nothing in corn sugar that will produce additional sediment beyond the yeast cells that will form no matter what sugar you prime with.  Corn sugar is easily and very efficiently consumed by the yeast to produce carbonation quickly and reliably in all bottles.

Dry malt extract on the other hand is made of several sugars, some of which are not easily fermented (or at all in some cases) and will take longer to produce carbonation.  It also costs significantly more than corn sugar, which is quite inexpensive by contrast.  DME will leave some leftovers in the bottle.  Some people claim these help with head retention in the resulting beer, but in our experience this is not noticeable.  On the other hand, in some cases a krauzen forms in the bottle when bottling with dry malt extract and that can be undesirable for the potential drinker of the bottle.  It is also more difficult to evenly distribute the DME in all of the bottles, resulting in less even carbonation among bottles.

It’s our opinion that in nearly all cases corn sugar is superior to DME for bottling.  This is not to say there is anything wrong with using the extract, simply that we don’t believe it works as well as corn sugar for this purpose.  As with anything in brewing, people will do what they want.  But our results have always been better with corn sugar, and we believe logical analysis is on our side.

In the future we may do a back-to-back comparison where we brew a single batch of beer, divide it in two at bottling time, and use corn sugar for half and DME for the other half.  If you’d be interested in seeing that, leave a comment.

Cheers!

One of the great satisfactions of brewing your own beer (and bottling it) is to look at the final product, all neatly in a row, waiting ready for a few weeks of bottle conditioning, and tasting it as it goes into the bottle.  This weekend we bottled a batch of lager we brewed at the end of November and had let ferment in the darkest corner of the basement for the last five weeks, first in the primary, then in the secondary.

When you bottle your beer, you always have to taste it.  Sure, it’s flat, but this is the first reward you get for the labor you’ve put forth so far.  And this batch was good.  Really good.  Assuming it tastes as good carbonated as it does now, this recipe will be going in our recipes section shortly.

Here’s a little shot for inspiration.  Remember, our guide has all the info you need to get started homebrewing great beer from the very first batch!

In our guide we describe the bottling process using a capper and steel bottle caps with standard beer bottles.  This is really best done as a two person job.  But lets say you’ve decided you want to keep homebrewing and you don’t want to have to find a friend every time you need to bottle beer.  There is a pricier alternative that makes life easier and requires fewer hands to do the job quickly: the easy cap bottle.

You are most likely familiar with these bottles from beer like Grolsch and Virgil’s root beer, among others.  In fact the Virgil’s and other brown bottles work well for this purpose.  We don’t recommend green bottles because of the light damage that can skunk your beer (sometimes this is desirable, but not generally).

At most homebrew shops, you can also buy these brown easy cap bottles by the twelve pack.  They are generally a couple of dollars per bottle, substantially more than their lesser brethren.  But if you brew a lot these are worth it.  You just replace the rubber seal every couple of batches.  Follow the same sterilization procedures that you do for normal bottling.

These can really make your life easier if you have to bottle solo.  It’s not the cheapest solution, but it might be worth it if you find yourself brewing often.  Just make sure you get them back from your friends.