Brewing and fermenting beer is only part of the equation. Carbonating your beer can make or break how good the beer tastes. Low carbonation levels can bring out the maltyness of your beer, while higher carbonation levels can bring out aromatics.
To figure out how much sugar to use, you can download our priming sugar calculator. We put this together to figure out how much sugar to use depending on how much carbonation we want. We also included some of the most popular sugars used to prime. These include: Corn Sugar, Cane Sugar, Brown Sugar, Molasses/Treacle, Candi Sugar, Lyle’s Golden Syrup, Maple Syrup, Honey, and Dry Malt Extract.
We also included a custom malt extract option in case you are using liquid malt extract or extract with different levels of fermentability.
In our better home brew formula training we include a list of beers with their recommended volumes of CO2.
Hope this helps you out. Don’t forget to share and let us know what you think.
Cheers!
8 replies to "Priming Sugar Calculator"
FYI… The Priming sugar calculator wll not open. It says it is encrypted. Nice try though. From the picture/link above, it looks like it would be very helpful.
@Tony – I just opened it and it worked fine. Try again?
Maybe it’s because my version Microsoft (excel, word, etc.) is an older version and is not compatible with that file. What program do you use to open it?
@Tony – I made it with Microsoft Excel 2003… I just re-uploaded the file and took away the worksheet protection, maybe that was causing the problem? (I’m not an excel expert as you can see… cheers!)
Jorge –
I recently carbonated an IPA with Clover Honey:
I have had problems with over carbonation in the past – so being overly cautious I only used 1/2 cup when the chart called for 3/4 of a cup.
> After two weeks the beer was severely under carbonated – got a little bit a bubbles in the mouth – but none in the glass, and forget about any foam, there was none to be had.
> After letting the beer age / condition in the bottle for one month the carbonation improved a little, and the late addition hop flavors were coming thru – also had a little foam around the edge of the glass.
> Well after the magic two month mark, everything improved – all the flavors were balanced and I am getting a thin layer of foam across the glass and even a nice fffffiitt sound when opening the bottles.
I guess the ‘yeasters’ just need a little more time converting the Honey compared to Corn Sugar.
One bonus I noticed: I have made IPA’s substituting 1 to 2 pounds of Malt Sugar with Honey and have not achieved as much Honey flavor as carbonating with just 1/2 a cup of ‘Da Golden Nectar’. The flavor is not sweet, (cause most the sugars are converted by the yeast) but an earthy, ‘floralness’ came thru. One of my friends described it as having a smoky marshmallow smell…
Anyway – I will definitely use Honey to carbonate again – but will use 2/3 – 3/4 of a cup next time :)-
– Antonio
Time does wonders for undercarbonated beers… it also helps if you lager them…
I appears that the link is broken.
Fixed!