In all likelihood, your first few beer kits came with a little bag simply labeled “priming sugar.” If you’re like I was at the time, then you probably didn’t pay much attention to it, other than reading that it needed to be boiled in some water and added to the bottling bucket before you filled and sealed your bottles of homebrew.
As you get further into brewing, you learn that the anonymous little bag of sugar contains 5 ounces (142 grams) of corn sugar, or dextrose, which is a good all-purpose amount for a 5-gallon (19-liter) batch of beer. But you’re not limited to priming your bottles with corn sugar by any means. Sure, it’s favored for its high fermentability, low moisture content, and neutral flavor, but bottle priming is just as ripe for experimentation as all other aspects of brewing. Consider these alternatives.
Plain old table sugar, also called cane sugar or beet sugar, works as well as corn sugar, is less expensive, and is probably already in your cupboard. Corn sugar contains some water, but table sugar is 100 percent sweet stuff. Practically speaking, this means you need to use about 10 percent less table sugar by weight than you would corn sugar when priming your beer. So, that 5-ounce (142-gram) bag of corn sugar would translate to about 4.5 ounces (128 grams) of table sugar. I think table sugar got a bad rap in the early days of homebrewing, which is why corn sugar remains the standard to this day. But in terms of cost and convenience, it’s hard to beat the white crystals from your supermarket.