sugar or spraymalt?

[mattyguk1]

hi all,im new to home brewing and on my first batch. im brewing woodfordes wherry. ive been scanning the forum and can anybody tell me wether its better to add sugar or spraymalt to the bottles? and what quantity should i put in each bottle? thanks in advance matt

[trucker5774]

For priming I have found no benefit in using anything other that white sugar. I usually boil about 80g in 150ml of water (approx). Allow to cool, add this solution to an empty bottling bucket. Rack your brew onto the solution which will mix it in and then bottle from there.

You could add the solution in equal amounts to the bottles with a syringe.....................just more messing about.

[floydmeddler]

Hi Matt. Use good old household sugar to bottle with. Sure you can use spraymalt but from what I am led to believe, it will take longer to carbonate your bottles and won't actually give any new flavour to the beer as the quantity is so little. However, using spraymalt instead of sugar during the actual brewing process will make a substantial improvement to your beer i.e. improving flavour and head retention.

Use this calculator to work out your quantity when priming bottles: http://www.geocities.com/lesjudith/Alco ... lator.html

For an ale, you should go for around 2.0 - 2.3 volumes. You can either boil this sugar with a little water or (what I do) you can use some of the beer to boil it in. I choose this method because I don't like introducing water to my finished beer.

Hope this helps and good luck with the first batch!