Thursday, December 1, 2011

Carbonate Your Beer with Sugars

By Jacob Watson


In a commercial brewery, the finished beer is usually carbonated with Carbon dioxide gas and the home brewers, who wish to know what type of sugar can be used to carbonate beer, can also opt for this by kegging and carbonating by force. But you can also carbonate it naturally by starting the process of secondary fermentation after bottling.

The right answer to what type of sugar can be used to carbonate beer, would be corn sugar, as it is very popular due to its reliability in beer fermentation without the hassles of any taste left behind. The entire amount of corn sugar, which would be about three-fourths of a cup for 5 gallons of beer, should be boiled in about a cup of water. The beer carbonates within two weeks.

You could also opt for dried malt syrup or extract syrup if you don't know what type of sugar can be used to carbonate beer. But care should be taken to use more amounts of this when compared to corn sugar, as the fermenting material in malt extract is only about 70 to 80 percent of that in corn sugar. If you are still wondering what type of sugar can be used to carbonate beer, then your other options would be honey which you need one cup for five gallons of beer carbonating it within two weeks. There are other sugars such as molasses, maple syrup, chocolate syrup, brown sugar, juice concentrate that can also be used.

Cleaning bottles for homebrew must be done very meticulously. It should be soaked in a cleaning solution and scrubbed well from the inside with a nylon bottle brush. There should be no deposits so that bacteria and molds cannot hide in it.

Once the bottles are used, they should be thoroughly cleaned and before using these should be perfectly sanitized. You could soak them in a good cleaning solution or, alternatively, put them into a dishwasher with the heat on. Dry them by placing upside down on the rack and do take care that you use boiled water to clean them. Tap water might spoil your beer. Other items needing sanitization are the siphon, spoons, container and the bottle caps too.




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