Secondary fermenting procedure, priming sugars, bottling.

[jubby]

I will be bottling 40 pints of Bishops Farewell in a few days. (run out of barrels)
Some advice on secondary fermenting methods and priming sugars would be appreciated. I have searched this forum, the internet and books and found conflicting advice, so I have written my own procedure, however, not sure if it's right. If you experienced brewers could take a look and let me know if it needs changing (or binning) I would appreciate it.
Here it is:

secondary fermentation

Squirt a blast of C02 into the secondary before racking the beer into the secondary container.
Rack the beer into the secondary with a teaspoon of cooled, boiled sugar solution with finings if required and any dry hop. Leave the beer in the secondary for two to three weeks under airlock, then cask or bottle.

Cask

Boil the conditioning sugars in a little of the beer (about 80g of sugar per 5 gallons. A little less if attenuation was low and the gravity is high)
Squirt of C02 in the barrel and rack the beer in with the cooled solution from above. Leave in a warm place for two weeks before moving to condition at lower temp.

Bottling

After sanitation and rinsing, final rinse bottles with boiled water.
Prepare the conditioning sugar as above but use the quantity of sugar to acheive the carbonation levels from the carbonation table. Gently stir the sugar solution into the secondary but avoid disturbing the sediment. Leave to stand for about an hour to settle and then bottle.
If using a bottling bucket, squirt of C02, sugar solution and rack beer in then bottle.

(The carbonation table is a seperate document from the 'how to brew' website.)

[Matt]

Hi Jubby,

The only amends to the above I'd suggest are:

2ndry - no need for sugar at this stage.

Priming cask or bottles - I just weigh out required sugar into a clean bowl and splash a good mugfull of boiled water over it, allow to dissolve and then use.

Bottles - I wouldn't bother rinsing with boiled water. I think thats a US paranoid brewers practise (no offense to anyone!). Its worth looking at getting a no-rinse sanitiser like Star San (available at Hop and Grape).

Hope that's useful.

Matt

[jubby]

Thanks Matt, that's very helpful. I was unsure about the rinsing as I don't rinse any of my brewing equipment with anything other than tap water. Think i will give that a miss.
The teaspoon of sugar came from Mr Lines book. He does not say why, but I assumed it was to encourage a little activity and produce a some Co2 to purge the secondary.

Thanks again.