Festival Premium Ale kit - No priming sugar

RunDMC

Hi there,

I'm in the process of finishing my first brew with a Festival Premium Celtic Red Ale kit. I started it with the malt, brewing sugar and yeast. I added the hops after 5 days and it is nearly finished.

The question I have is about priming. There is no priming sugar in the kit and I don't know if that is a mistake, or if this brew doesn't require it. Any suggestions?

Thanks,

R

raxy

RunDMC wrote: »

Hi there,

I'm in the process of finishing my first brew with a Festival Premium Celtic Red Ale kit. I started it with the malt, brewing sugar and yeast. I added the hops after 5 days and it is nearly finished.

The question I have is about priming. There is no priming sugar in the kit and I don't know if that is a mistake, or if this brew doesn't require it. Any suggestions?

Thanks,

R

Some kits don't include priming sugar. When they do they generally aren't the right amount anyway. The sugar needed varies on preference as well. When I brewed for my Dad he didn't want any priming sugar added as he wanted it flat. For me I had to add about 130g & bulk prime, that would probably be over carved for a red ale though.
There's online calculators yo tell you how much to add depending on what level of carbonation you want.

mordeith

You can just use ordinary table sugar for priming. I use half a teaspoon per bottle. I'm currently working through a red ale batch and carbonation is perfectly fine for my taste.

I've always found these to be better than sugar for any brews I've done. Easier to get consistently right, quicker, less messy, much better experience altogether.

RunDMC

Thanks for the responses, folks, that's exactly what I was looking for.

R

Carawaystick

Figure out how much sugar you need, add the same weight water to apot, boil it to sterilize the sugar
pour the boiled syrup into a bottling bucket, and siphon the beer out of the fermenter onto the syrup to mix it.

I tried the batch priming but found it nothing only hassle. Definitely easier to just pop a tablet thing in each bottle, but the only issue I found is that nobody makes one for a 500ml bottle.

Sleepy

The standard drops seem to work fine for me and I bottle my homebrew in old Bulmers pint bottles. I doubled up on the drops in a dozen or so bottles on one batch and, honestly, there was very little difference in carbonation or taste when compared to ones that I'd used single drops on.

Sleepy

Sleepy wrote: »

The standard drops seem to work fine for me and I bottle my homebrew in old Bulmers pint bottles. I doubled up on the drops in a dozen or so bottles on one batch and, honestly, there was very little difference in carbonation or taste when compared to ones that I'd used single drops on.

Would a 500ml not be at risk of cracking with two drops?

Sleepy

Not in my (limited) experience.