I tried to take a shortcut. I found these carbonation tablets. When you carbonate beer, the simplest way is to boil about 4 oz. of corn sugar in about 2 cups of water for 10 minutes. Then let it cool to about 75 degrees. Pour that into your bottling bucket, then "rack" your beer from your fermenter to the bottling bucket.

Well on my 2nd and 3rd batch i decided to use these Cooper's carbonation drops. Package said 1 per bottle. So i dropped one drop (looks like a cough drop) into each bottle and filled the bottles and capped them. When i popped open the cap about 2 weeks later, i had a beer geyser. I ended up dumping 2 batches (about 85 beers) because of it. I worked with a guy who was making his own moonshine, so he came by the house and poured it all in a bucket and got about 1 pint of shine out of it, not a total loss.

It sucked because i brewed 2 batches over 2 weekends, so i had no clue how the carb drops would affect my brew, until it was too late and i lost 2 batches.

So a tip. Never use carbonation drops.

This post was edited on 1/10/13 at 2:52 pm

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Posted by swampdawg

Baton Rouge, LA

Member since Nov 2007

5141 posts

Posted on 1/10/13 at 3:02 pm to BugAC

quote:
Well on my 2nd and 3rd batch i decided to use these Cooper's carbonation drops. Package said 1 per bottle. So i dropped one drop (looks like a cough drop) into each bottle and filled the bottles and capped them. When i popped open the cap about 2 weeks later, i had a beer geyser. I ended up dumping 2 batches (about 85 beers) because of it. I worked with a guy who was making his own moonshine, so he came by the house and poured it all in a bucket and got about 1 pint of shine out of it, not a total loss.

It sucked because i brewed 2 batches over 2 weekends, so i had no clue how the carb drops would affect my brew, until it was too late and i lost 2 batches.

So a tip. Never use carbonation drops.

I have used them in the past with no ill effects.

The only time I have had a gusher is from the few times an infection has gotten in there at bottling. Maybe you had something else going. Could you taste anything weird with the beer?

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Posted by Zappas Stache

Utility Muffin Research Kitchen

Member since Apr 2009

38790 posts

Posted on 1/10/13 at 3:30 pm to BugAC

I have a TripleIPA that wouldn't carb very well. I turned the bottles over for 10 seconds twice in one week and kicked my fridge temp up to 74 from 69.....this was most likely my problem.....temp too low. Opened one last night and boy did it carbonate.....looked like Spindletop. After I lost 1/3 of the bottle and it settled down, its a great tasting beer. 240 IBUs of pure face melting, sinus clearing bliss. No way I dump this. I'll just open the bottle in a larger vessel like a large glass pitcher to collect the gushings.

This post was edited on 1/10/13 at 3:35 pm

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