Carbonating Your Beer

At this point, just before bottling the beer is flat so we want to give it some fizz. To do this we need to prepare some priming sugar. Depending on you beer kit, there may be a recommended amount of sugar to add so follow the advice in the instruction. If however there is no clear advice and you have brewed 5 gallons of beer all that is needed is to boil roughly 100 grams of sugar in 2 cups of water for 10 minutes. This is to sanitise, allow the sugar mixture to cool to room temperature.

Its always a good idea to rack the beer on to another vessel before bottling if you can because this will decrease the chances of sediment making it into the bottle. If you are racking put the priming sugar in the new vessel and syphon the beer on top of this without splashing it. If you can’t do this don’t worry just take it easy and try not to disturb the sediment too much. Add the sugar mixture and mix the priming sugar in by stirring gently to avoid splashing with a sanitised spoon.