I’ve been priming by dissolving corn sugar (boiled with dechlorinated water then cooled with an ice bath), then gently mixing in the primary before bottling. The first time no problem. The second time I’ve had some bottles that were gushers and some that were a little on the flat side. Third time I cold crashed and had a few that were OK, some totally flat.
I’m afraid to mix too vigorously so as not to disturb the yeast and also not to let much oxygen in. Any tips on consistency?
I put my beer in a keg (purged with co2) and then put in the priming sugar solution. I put the lid on and purge again. I put the keg in my truck and I drive it around the block to help mix it. Then I bottle using a Blichmann Beer Gun.
If you pour the priming solution in the bucket and then rack the beer on top of it, the motion does a pretty good job of mixing it. When I bottled, I found that a gentle stir after every 10 bottles or so gave me even carbonation throughout the batch. Try a few different techniques and find out which works best for you. Brewing beer is a learning process.
What I’ve always done was begin transferring to the bottling bucket first. I let the tubing wrap around the inside perimeter of the bucket so the beer swirls as it is transferring. Then I slowly pour the hot priming solution into the beer fairly early on in the transfer process. By the end of racking it should be evenly blended in. My carbonation level was always consistent from bottle to bottle using this method.
This is a great example of different things that work for brewers. WHooda thunk it?
^^^ THIS.
I used to do exactly this when bottling in my early days of brewing.
I now just force carbonate in the keg and bottle with a beer gun. If you are kegging, you could always pour the hot solution of priming solution into the keg and rack the beer on top of it through the beer out keg plug to thoroughly mix it. Then bottle from the keg using a beer gun.
+1. Additionally, I also gently stir my bottling bucket for about 2 minutes prior to bottling.
When I bottled, I added my priming solution to the bucket hot and racked beer onto it, which did good job of stirring it in. As far as to O2 pickup, it is not a problem with bottle-conditioned beer, as the yeast will rapidly consume any O2 that gets absorbed because they have to go through the fermentation process a second time. Unlike kegged or force carbonated bottled beer, bottle conditioned beer has a new carbon source to deplete. That is one of the benefits of priming in the bottle.
I do it a little differently. I don’t use a bottling bucket and bottle from the fermenter. I calculate my required volume of sugar required for my batch and make a priming solution based upon the number of bottles I anticipate filling. Usually around 50 to 54 12 ounces. For example, if a need 4 ounces of sugar for my batch I will do that in about 250ml of water, let it cool and when bottling I use a small medicine syringe. I squirt 2.5 ml in each bottle right before filling it.
Been using this method for about a year now and have very consistent carbonation throughout the batch.