Newest mistake for other newbies

[Tubbsy9876]

Hi all,

I was in the middle of bottle my second brew - a Summer Ale based on one of Doc's recipes I found - partial mash.

Anyway, bottles are clean, beer is ready and the priming sugar is prepped. Pop in the sugar into the bottom of the bottling container and away we go! Half an hour later, everything is looking peachy.

As a quick check, I figure I'll take a final sg reading on the dregs in the bottom. Its off the scale! A quick taste and its sickly sweet. Doesn't take me long to realise that I've been so gentle in racking it over that the sugar hasn't fully dissolved in, and its stratified over the batch. What i have now are about 50% that will be under-carbonated, and 50% bottle bombs!!!!

No option but to open them all up again, pour them back in and go again I lost a fair bit of the dissolved CO2 in the beer doing this so I suspect they will be mostly under carbonated.... but that beats beer all over my walls!

I think this partially happened because my sugar syrup wasn't thin enough. Live and learn

 

[Vini2ton]

I simply boil my sugar with a cup of water, let it cool, then rack the beer onto it in the bottling drum. A gentle stir with sanitised spoon ensures the sugar is blended. I don't think that they'll be under-carbed but may be a bit oxidised. Good excuse to drink them quickly! Then again, who needs an excuse?