Carbonting question

I have my beer in bottling bucket.

I want to bottle a few right now and keg the rest in a month from now.
What are my options.

Do the fizz drops work good?
How long does it take to carbonate?

Any other options

thqanks

I have heard some complaints about the fizz drops but it is an option. You could also drain a gallon into a pitcher, add 1oz of table sugar and bottle that much. 1/2gal, use 1/2oz.

Why do you have the beer in a bottling bucket if you’re not going to bottle? Do you have a carboy that you can rack the beer into?

Easiest is to have a few extra kegs around, rack from primary directly to keg what you want to keg, the rest to a bottling bucket, use an online calculator to find the appropriate amount of priming sugar for the volume in the bottling bucket. That way you can seal up the keg, crash it, or whatever you are going to do, and carb it when you want/need to.

If you’re only working with one keg in your system, I would figure out how much you want to bottle, plug that into a priming sugar calculator, then divide up the sugar solution among the number bottles, then fill with your wand. Leave the rest of the beer in the bottling bucket up until you need/want to keg it.

+1 on hearing of problems with the tablets. Just use table sugar and an online calculator. Easier and cheaper.

When I bottle just a few bottles, here’s what I do:

You need a half teaspoon cane sugar or beet sugar per 12 oz bottle. If you can figure out how many bottles you want, measure out the appropriate teaspoons of sugar. Then add a little water, and boil in the microwave for a minute or two. Then divide this priming sugar water evenly among the designated number of sanitized bottles. Add your beer, and bottle it up. If kept warm at 70 F or more, it will be carbonated within a week. Chill and enjoy.

[quote=“dmtaylo2”]When I bottle just a few bottles, here’s what I do:

You need a half teaspoon cane sugar or beet sugar per 12 oz bottle. If you can figure out how many bottles you want, measure out the appropriate teaspoons of sugar. Then add a little water, and boil in the microwave for a minute or two. Then divide this priming sugar water evenly among the designated number of sanitized bottles. Add your beer, and bottle it up. If kept warm at 70 F or more, it will be carbonated within a week. Chill and enjoy.[/quote]
I take it you’re hydrating first so the sugar granuiles won’t cause the beer to foam like crazy?

FWIW…if I have a “heavy” batch and don’t have enough room in the keg I use the fizz drops for whatever is left over. They have worked fine for me, and I would say they carb somewhere in the 2.0-2.5 CO2 range. I have only used them in 12oz. bottles however. Since I usually have under a sixer leftover these little candy drops are darned convenient.

[quote=“tom sawyer”][quote=“dmtaylo2”]When I bottle just a few bottles, here’s what I do:

You need a half teaspoon cane sugar or beet sugar per 12 oz bottle. If you can figure out how many bottles you want, measure out the appropriate teaspoons of sugar. Then add a little water, and boil in the microwave for a minute or two. Then divide this priming sugar water evenly among the designated number of sanitized bottles. Add your beer, and bottle it up. If kept warm at 70 F or more, it will be carbonated within a week. Chill and enjoy.[/quote]
I take it you’re hydrating first so the sugar granuiles won’t cause the beer to foam like crazy?[/quote]

Yep – You must have missed the part where I said “add a little water, and boil”.

I read that, I was just clarifying since I tried adding granular sugar to bottled beer once and made a nice geyser. I do think you could get by without boiling but it’d certainly be safer.