Advice concerning Priming Sugar
I bottle condition my brew, and I accomplish this by adding a measured amount of corn sugar–don’t confuse this with corn syrup–to my beer right before bottling. Until my last batch, I had been purchasing “single serving” priming sugar pouches prepared by my local homebrew shop. Now that I have gone all-grain, I decided to buy a big bag of corn sugar and measure it out myself. Simple enough.
This last batch of beer, my Frozen Oak Brown Ale, I measured out and added 3/4 cup of priming sugar, waited almost a month to let it age, and discovered that the beer was still very flat according to my standards.
Where did I go wrong? I suspect that I made the mistake of measuring corn sugar out by volume rather than weight. Corn sugar is very, very light and powdry. 3/4 of a cup of “sifted” corn sugar renders a very different weight than 3/4 cup of packed corn sugar. Just as is the rule of thumb when baking with flour, always measure powder goods by weight, not volume.
3/4 cup of priming sugar should weight about 4.0-4.4 ounces.
Happy brewing.
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