How to Use Priming Sugar - Home Brewing Co.

George Thornton from Home Brewing Co / The Homebrewer walks through some of the basics for using priming sugar to carbonate your beer, mead, cider, or sparkling wine.

Bottle conditioning with priming sugar is also referred to as "natural carbonation." The gist is that after fermentation we can add a little more sugar to the beer, which the yeast will consume and create co2. This co2 will remain in the bottle because of the cap, and will carbonate your beer.

The typical dosing rate is about 0.7 oz to 1.0 per gallon of liquid for "typical" beer carbonation volumes. Add more sugar for more carbonation.

The bottles should be left at room temp during this time. This process takes 5-10 days to complete.

Mileage varies depending on the amount of sugar (more food for the yeast, more co2), the type of sugar (some sugar is more consumable than others), the temperature of the bottles (warmer temps tend to speed up the process), the amount of time that has passed from the beginning of fermentation to bottling day, and the health of the yeast (sometimes high abv beverages that have been aging for over 2-3 weeks may not have healthy enough yeast to finish the job).

Priming sugar is typically dextrose (aka corn sugar), but other sugars can be used with similar (not identical) results. The key is researching each sugar you are planning on using, experimenting, and taking good notes.

Also, how many times does George have to say "gist" in this video?!