Add bottling sugar to 1.030 FG Barleywine?

[joftinac]

Brewers,

I'm getting ready to bottle a Lord Fatbottom Barleywine batch and I'm trying to figure out the best plan for bottling sugar. Bottle-bombs and/or over-carbonation are things I would like to avoid.

I will be re-yeasting, as it's been in secondary for about 5 months. With the FG at 1.030 (from OG of 1.121) I'm hesitant to add bottling sugar if there's still plenty of residual fermentables for the new yeast to carbonate properly. The sample doesn't taste overly sweet, but honestly with the hops still so forward, it's hard for me to tell.

At this point I'm thinking of adding half the bottling sugar I usually would, but I'd like to see if you guys have any experience bottling a brew of this type.

Would you add the "normal" amount of sugar? Half? No sugar? What do y'all think?

 

[nukebrewer]

As long as you're sure it finished, you should add the "normal" amount of priming sugar. If it is, indeed, finished that means there are no other fermentables so any priming sugar you add will be the only thing that goes toward adding carbonation.

 

[FarmerTed]

I brewed the Thomas Hardy clone just about a year ago on a really small scale (1 gallon; lost half of it due to blow-out, lol). Anyway, it finished out at 1.030/12.2% ABV. I bottled 8x8 oz bottles of it, and added just about 1 g of sugar per bottle, which should give somewhere in the 1.5 volumes of CO2 per bottle range. I was afraid of getting bombs as well. Anyway, 10 months after bottling, none of them have blown up yet, lol. I still haven't opened any up, so I couldn't tell you if the carb level is ok or not. The stuff was a 'little on the hot side', lol, so I haven't been in a big hurry. I may open one on the one year birthday of the stuff.

 

[joftinac]

Thanks for the tips! I appreciate your insight and think I'll go ahead and go with the "normal" sugar amount -- maybe a little less. I don't want this barleywine to be too fizzy anyway, so I think that will be a fair compromise.