Ale, Do i have to prime bottles with sugar

I love my ale, but every instruction on my kits say to prime the bottles with 1/2 a tea spoon of sugar. Im finding my ales really fizzy and i don't like it too fizzy, in fact i prefer them as flat as possible. Now I'm guessing that its not necessary to prime my ale at all, and cant see a problem if i don't prime.

So now i turn to my all knowing forum of beer lovers to ask... "Do I Have To Prime My Bottles At All?"

Thanks!!

By the old definition,"real ales" don't have hops,& were kegged after 4 days of fermentation. What we have now is varying carbonation. English cask ales have lower carbonation,whereas American ales have substantially more carbonation. English might be 1.8 volumes of co2,where americans average 2.5 vco2 or so. So you should have at least some carbonation.

If you're doing "dry sugar in the bottle" method for your beer's you're really leading yourself to inconsistant issues such as over carbonation. Almost no one primes beer that way...the best and most consistent way is what we call bulk priming.

It's not that you're using sugar that is the problem, it's how you're delivering said sugar.

Check out my bottling tips sticky for how to do it much better.