Bottling without priming?

[LemonD]

Is it possible to bottle when a brew is a couple of points off it's FG and get carbonation without explosions?
I ask because the last couple of Geordie bitter kits I've done I liked the taste and body better when they were 1012-1014, both kits FG was 1010.

[Ditch]

Sounds, on the face of it, just the recipe for the 'Bottle Grenades' so many people made in the old days, mate.

Saying that; I Keg without priming. I wonder if my idiosyncratic methods (I don't bother with a Hydrometer or priming sugars) are to my disadvantage? Either way, I get a 'Lively' pour! I suspect You'd get highly dangerous bottles of tragedy in waiting.

Now; I'm a complete know nothing much, where bottling's concerned. But I see where ye trying to get. I can't help wondering if a pinch of some chemical - Sodium Met' rings a bell - might not be able to halt ye fermentation at just the desired point, without doing too much to the flavour ye trying to capture there?

Please don't quote me on this, let alone try it just yet. But I believe I may have read that could be the case? Just saying it to give ye a morale boost till someone more certain comes along

[brysie]

I Keg without priming.

i read that on one of your posts last week ditch and ive got to say it intrigued me.
have you never primed the stoutmonster?
mines due for bottling this weekend hopefully [thats if the bugger has calmed down and has decided to behave himself] and im gonna have to try a couple without any priming sugar just for comparisons sake.

[LemonD]

im gonna have to try a couple without any priming sugar just for comparisons sake.

That's what I've decided to try, I'll bottle up a 2l Pet as that'll take more welly and put it where it's out of the way of small children & dogs.

[Ditch]

Brysie and LemonD; Please note that ye appear - Both - to be 'taking a leaf out of Ditch's book' there. Yet neither of ye are doing what I do. Thus I can't offer any hands on experience of the likely results.

One: Ye Both using bottles? I (Basic Barrel) Keg.

Two: Why Don't I 'Prime' my Kegs? Because I don't use sugar in my tea. Thus I have no sugar in the place. Some sort of lapse led to my kegging my first brew without 'Priming Sugar'. It worked. Suited me.

I really don't know what else to say.

[brysie]

fair play ditch but...

havnt you been tempted to fill a lemonade bottle and add a few teaspoons of sugar?
just for fun.

[stevezx7r]

You don't need to prime a bottle to get carbonation. You need to be carefull you don't make bottle bombs if the FG is way off but that goes for over priming too.

Iirc, in days of old (when knights were bold) they never bothered priming bottles, they just relied on the natural carbonation taking place due to the yeast. It takes maybe twice as long to carbonate and possibly won't be as carbonated as a primed bottle but ale shouldn't be super fizzy in my book anyway.

[brysie]

i did not know that...

doesnt the extra sugar use up any unused yeast in the bottle though.?

[stevezx7r]

It's the other way round brysie, the yeast (if alive and viable) uses any sugar you add to it to make alcohol and c02. If you don't add extra sugar, the yeast will continue to ferment any remaining sugar then drop out of suspension to the bottom of the keg/bottle.

It then dies