Grams of castor sugar in carbonation drops

[Legless]

i now bulk prime before bottling into 375 ml stubbies. I use 132 grams of castor sugar for 23 litres at 18 Celsius.
I have a few packets of coopers carbonation drops left over, which are 4 g each, but contain 2 ingredients saccharine and glucose.
Can I just dissolve 132 g of carbonation drops and bulk prime with that?

 

[manga]

I can't answer your question on carbonation drops as I have never used them.

What I can recommend you try is bulk priming by boiling 0.5L water with 8g/L of dried malt extract. So if your fermenter is at 23L, you would boil 184g. I simmer for 10 minutes then let it cool (covered) to sterilise it.
When it is close to your fermenter temperature, stir it in with a large sterilised spoon.
I have found that this gives good gassing. I use sturdy 750ml bottles though and your 375ml stubbies may explode, I suggest you try 4g/L for your stubbies to begin with.

 

[JDW81]

Why not just put one carbonation drop in each stubby if you want to use them? That's the usual recommended dosing when using carbonation drops (1 per stubbie, 2 per long neck).

If you're unsure, stick to what you know. You don't want to mess around with carbonation in bottles. If you cock it up you'll end up with hand grenades.

JD

 

[BrewLizard]

If you look at the back of the packet (I'm going off a Woollies pic), it's 2.52g of sugar per drop, on average. That's a mixture of sucrose and glucose. Looks like you normally dose your bottles with 2.15g of sugar, so if you used them as directed, you would have slightly more carbonated beer than you're used to.

Does it matter? Not sure. I've never used the carbonation drops. Some people say they make the beer overly carbonated, which is true if you calculate dosing based on the CO2 calculators for almost any beer style.

 

[MHB]

If you want to understand Carbonation, the section on Braukaiser is pretty dam good, as usual.
There are two ways to measure the amount of CO2 you want in your beer, the old Volumes of CO2 and the newer metric equivalent which is grams/Litre (the Germans call it %CO2 if you read some of their references, 5g/L would be 0.5% W/V CO2)
To calculate Volumes you will first get the answer in g/L then convert it to Volumes - we aren't American so we can stay in metric units.

There is an old saying, The longer the rope, the easier broke with bottles its the bigger the bottle the easier it is to blow them up. Just because of the physics of force, smaller bottles tend to be much stronger. Still it pays to get your head around the calculations and don't push your luck too far.

Bulk priming really is the best option for most home brewers. As different beers want different amounts of fizz to taste their best (see the footer in the carbonation tables). Bulk priming gives you very precise control and good consistency.
Reading manga (above) it isn't clear, but you will need to rack the beer into another container, if you add the sugar solution to the primary and stir, you will have a heck of a lot of yeast in each bottle. Good idea to read a guide on bulk priming, maybe even visit YouTube.
Mark

 

[manga]

Reading manga (above) it isn't clear, but you will need to rack the beer into another container

As I don't have a secondary pail/container I do stir it into the primary fermenter. I gently stir being careful not to touch the bottom, yes it stirs up some yeast and my 750ml bottles generally have about 5mm of sediment at the bottom.
This has never caused me any problems.

 

[BrewLizard]

If you only have one vessel (as I do), might want to consider pseudo bulk priming. For pale ales, I make a 38% sugar solution (weigh sugar, then add water and boil in microwave and top up until the right total volume), then dispense 5mL with a 20mL syringe into each 330mL stubbie (=1.9g sugar per).

Pros:
- Super fast (bang, bang, squirt, squirt, done)
- Very accurate, even if you rush and are out by ±0.5mL
- No stirring primary fermenter
- No swirling into secondary or worrying about uneven mixing
- No secondary to wash/sanitise
- Far less washing up in general
- Easily adjust to different beer styles (unlike carbonation drops)

True bulk priming is probably worth it for 23L batches, but I have no interest in drinking 3 cases of the same beer (I do 5-10L batches).

 

[manga]

That's an excellent idea Brew Lizard.