Starting To Bulk Prime

[benjie]

:beer: I have been brewing "coopers" kits for about 18 months now and have had some very nice copliments on what I have done so far. I am now thinking of bulk priming my bottles (up till now I have been carbo dropping them) but I'm not too sure how to go about this. I want to use LME so I am wanting some information on how much I should be using LME for bulk priming in a 20ltr wash? Thanks for any feed backs.

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

:beer: I have been brewing "coopers" kits for about 18 months now and have had some very nice copliments on what I have done so far. I am now thinking of bulk priming my bottles (up till now I have been carbo dropping them) but I'm not too sure how to go about this. I want to use LME so I am wanting some information on how much I should be using LME for bulk priming in a 20ltr wash? Thanks for any feed backs.

Divide the # of Litres in your fermenter by the number of bottles you'll get out of it, then multiply the # of bottles by how much sugar you wish to put in each.

It's that simple. I've been doing it for years, and never found an easier method.

Of course how much per bottle is something you'll have to research, as LME, dextrose, glucose, etc all behave differently as carbonation sugars.

Also, go to bunnings (assuming you are doing the standard 20-23L batch), buy a barrel and tap from the camping area (about $16 in total), and some food grade hosing and rack (transfer) your beer. Getting it off that yeast cake will improve clarity out of sight.

Hope it all works out well and glad you're enjoying the hobby.

Goomba

 

[ashley_leask]

There's a handy calculator here as well as many others available online.

If you're looking to bulk prime to carb your beers to different levels by style that's a good place to start. You'll need to use more DME than dextrose though, to achieve the same result, any reason for the preference?

I get more consistent results with BP than I got with the carb drops.

Cheers,

Ash

 

[jakub76]

go to bunnings (assuming you are doing the standard 20-23L batch), buy a barrel and tap from the camping area (about $16 in total), and some food grade hosing and rack (transfer) your beer. Getting it off that yeast cake will improve clarity out of sight.

That's good advice.
For a 22-24L batch I usually use 160-180grams of dextrose, no need to use LME as it's only a few % of your sugars - you won't taste the diff. Boil your sugar up in about 500ml of beer straight from your fermenter. Pour that into your CLEAN AND SANITIZED bottling vessel then rack the remaining beer on top.
Be careful of aerating your beer though. I found it has much better shelf life if you can minimise aeration by getting a hose that fits snuggly over your fermenter tap and runs all the way to the bottom of your bottling vessel. Because of the transfer be extra careful with sanitation too, I spray everything with iodophore solution and I place cling wrap over the bottling vessel during transfer.

 

[rude]

Hey jacub 76 you use 500ml of the beer from the fermenter with the dex why not just use water ?

No big deal just curious to how you bulk prime

I usually use 130g dex with 600ml of water boiled for 15 mins then I cool it in the sink

I think some crew dont worry about cooling as when they rack the bulk wort from the fermenter cools it down

 

[jakub76]

I use beer instead of water because I dont want to water down my beer. I don't cool it because a) it's good for sanitation and b.) the sugar will mix better when hot - more runny

 

[mh971]

Benjie,

I work on around 150g for 23L adjusted according to volume you are bottling.

I rack to a secondary to improve clarity about a week before bottling, however with straight K&K or Extract this step is probably not needed and only another chance to introduce infection. Having said that it is good to do to practice sanitary transfers as if you go all grain you will want to use secondary.

Once you've got your priming vessel ready, set it on ground with fermenter on a bench above, run your cleaned and sanitised hose from the fermenter tap down into the priming barrel with it curled around inside the base, this will help mix the beer with the priming solution as it runs in.

Add your boiled and cooled priming solution

Before you open Tap on fermenter crimp the hose with your hand about 4-500mm from tap, keep it clamped firmly then open tap and allow this section of hose to completely fill. Once it is full release the grip on hose and let beer run down, this ensures a bubble free syphon action from the tap and fast transfer with minimal exposure to oxygen.

If you have access to CO2 when racking to secondary or priming vessel you can give them a quick blast of CO2 to displace the oxygen before transfer, this will minimise oxidisation of your beer.

 

[Lecterfan]

I use 5gms per litre dex, sometimes a bit more (5.5 - 6), sometimes less for a british ale (4.5). I don't like highly carbonated beer. I use the calculators also as a rough guide, but I usually come back to 5 as I tend to brew much the same type of beer.

I dissolve this amount in 100mls of boiling water. It gets gently poured into the racking vessell half way through the racking process. As I remove the hose that did the racking I give the beer a very gentle swirl.

100mls of water that has usually over 100gms of fermentables in it isn't really watering down the beer IMHO. :icon_cheers:

Racking sounds really complicated due to the level of detail that people provide, but really it is a very simple process. Be clean, be gentle, be sensible.

 

[mh971]

Racking sounds really complicated due to the level of detail that people provide, but really it is a very simple process. Be clean, be gentle, be sensible.

Yep that'd be me, making the simple sound complicated. Not intentionally just trying to cover everything, and a carry over of the level of detail I need to go to in my job.

Lecterfan is right, simple explanations are better. Apologies for making it sound complex Benjie.

It took me ages before I went all grain because so much detail from so many people made it sound all too complicated. Ended up and got the confidence up from a very simple pictorial thread on here by NickJD and watching a few youtube videos.

Cheers Mick

 

[hazard]

I use beer instead of water because I dont want to water down my beer. I don't cool it because a) it's good for sanitation and b.) the sugar will mix better when hot - more runny

But boiling it will evaporate the alcohol. Alcohol has a boiling point of 78 deg C, so if you are boiling the priming sugar with 500ml of beer than alcohol content of your final product will be less compared to adding 200ml of water!!

 

[Lecterfan]

Yep that'd be me, making the simple sound complicated. Not intentionally just trying to cover everything, and a carry over of the level of detail I need to go to in my job.

Cheers Mick

Haha :lol: Not all...the level of detail is great and exactly what people need to know...but they also need to know that after you've done it once you realise that it is one of the easiest parts of brewing.

I think stressing the importance of cleaning, sanitation, keep bugs out and not aerating a fermented beer are general axioms that apply to all aspects of brewing. So, when racking you put a tube on the tap of a fermenter and the beer goes wherever the end of the tube is. Easy. But always keep the axioms in mind.

:icon_chickcheers:


Also, aside from boiling off alcohol, wouldn't boiling 500mls of beer, even for a short period of time cause some degree of caramelisation and make a slight change to the flavour profile (possibly an unwelcome one in a light coloured 20IBU lager for eg?) I am not knocking, just asking...

 

[benjie]

All good coments and thank you all very much. Think I'm going to start with the idea of adding the same amount of LME as I would sugar, for example: if I get 26 bottles from my normal wash and I add 5ml of sugar to each bottle (26*.5=133) I think I'm going to try disolving 133ml of LME in the same amount of water. Racking my beer into my bottling bucket, adding my LME primer then bottling and seeing how this turns out. All trile and error and from your comments this sounds like a good point to start?

 

[Lecterfan]

All good coments and thank you all very much. Think I'm going to start with the idea of adding the same amount of LME as I would sugar, for example: if I get 26 bottles from my normal wash and I add 5ml of sugar to each bottle (26*.5=133) I think I'm going to try disolving 133ml of LME in the same amount of water. Racking my beer into my bottling bucket, adding my LME primer then bottling and seeing how this turns out. All trile and error and from your comments this sounds like a good point to start?

Sounds good - the weight remains the same across priming sugars...5gms of lme, dex, cane sugar etc...obviously the quantities will appear different but the weight is what's important. At least that is how I've always operated. There is probably a chemical reason that I am wrong, but... meh

5gms into a 750ml bottle works out to 6.5gms (approx) per liter of beer which in my opinion is on the higher side of carbonation, but it is still less than what many other people use (and I often leave bottles for 4-6 weeks before drinking so less priming sugars still has time to work for me).

I tend to add the priming solution half way through the racking process...and then when I remove my hose I give the beer a very gentle swirl to ensure that the solution has been mixed through.

Get into it benjie.

 

[benjie]

Sounds good - the weight remains the same across priming sugars...5gms of lme, dex, cane sugar etc...obviously the quantities will appear different but the weight is what's important. At least that is how I've always operated. There is probably a chemical reason that I am wrong, but... meh

5gms into a 750ml bottle works out to 6.5gms (approx) per liter of beer which in my opinion is on the higher side of carbonation, but it is still less than what many other people use (and I often leave bottles for 4-6 weeks before drinking so less priming sugars still has time to work for me).

I tend to add the priming solution half way through the racking process...and then when I remove my hose I give the beer a very gentle swirl to ensure that the solution has been mixed through.

Get into it benjie.

Thank you for that. have just weighed out my 5ml (1xtsp) of sugar and it weighs in at 5.8gm so im going to work with that. Works out to be 155gms/20ltr.

 

[Bribie G]

Are you looking to bulk prime because:

a. Carb drops are a ripoff, or:
b. you have a selection of bottle sizes and bulk priming will ensure even carbonation?

If it's a cost thing and you are using the standard brown PET bottles then you can get perfectly consistent carbonation using a sugar cube into each PET for a fraction of the cost of the drops. Won't work with glass however.

Disadvantages of bulk priming are that you need to transfer to a second vessel for mixing, which can risk infection / oxidation (especially in the summer), and it's an extra vessel to clean up. However for odd sized bottles it's a good method.

 

[benjie]

Are you looking to bulk prime because:

a. Carb drops are a ripoff, or:
b. you have a selection of bottle sizes and bulk priming will ensure even carbonation?

If it's a cost thing and you are using the standard brown PET bottles then you can get perfectly consistent carbonation using a sugar cube into each PET for a fraction of the cost of the drops. Won't work with glass however.

Disadvantages of bulk priming are that you need to transfer to a second vessel for mixing, which can risk infection / oxidation (especially in the summer), and it's an extra vessel to clean up. However for odd sized bottles it's a good method.

All bottles are the same size, like you say...just trying to get away from the "rip off" that carbo drops seem to be :angry: . Been putting 1 x tsp in each glass bottle that I have and seems to be workinbg fine. Just thought that bulk priming seemed to be like the next step??? Trying to cut down on the time/inconvenience of having to go through and prime each indervidual bottle as well. Not too bad when I am only doing 20 ltrs but abit of a headache when I do my 43ltr brews :wacko: .

 

[Bribie G]

The CSR cubes fit perfectly through the top of a PET and are about a third of the cost of the drops - I never use anything else and that includes comp beers.

 

[benjie]

There's a handy calculator here as well as many others available online.

If you're looking to bulk prime to carb your beers to different levels by style that's a good place to start. You'll need to use more DME than dextrose though, to achieve the same result, any reason for the preference?

I get more consistent results with BP than I got with the carb drops.

Cheers,

Ash

BP??

 

[DUANNE]

bulk priming. either that or pouring some 10w/40 in the fermenter.

 

[benjie]

bulk priming. either that or pouring some 10w/40 in the fermenter.

OK, I work for a transport company so that will be easy to source...I take it that I will just use the same quantity as I would LME? Should be good for keeping the costs down seeing it is always good to use something that is free.