Beer Forum

Howdy,

Since I only bottle I have been thinkng of using non-standard priming agents to see want additional character they can provied. - While Reading "Brewing with Wheat" by Stan Hieronymus, Steve Pauwels Wheat Wine Recipe (p.144) used grape concentrate for priming.
"Bottle with grape juice to increase complexity...consentrated grape juice has 68 degrees Brix or 68 grams sugar per 100 grams solution."
I emailed Steven Pauwels at Boulevard Brewng and he kindly answered my question about grape concentrate volumes needed for bottle priming a 5gal batch.

"Hi Andy,

Thanks for your question about priming with Muscat concentrate.
We also use Muscat concentrate to bottle condition our wheat wine and find that the Muscat juice adds some flavor to the beer. It is only dosed in small amounts so you can’t expect a lot from it.

As for calculation:
68 Brix = 68 grams sucrose per 100 gram
Flat beer has about 1 volume CO2 – addition of 2 volume to get to 3 volumes
In metric: 10 g/l sucrose -> 5 g/l CO2
Increase 2 volumes = increase ca. 4 g/l = addition of 8 g/l sucrose.
Density of concentrate is 11.13 lbs/gall or 1.33 kg/l
To add 8 grams/l you need to add 1,000 ml x 8 grams/1,330 grams = 6 ml
6 ml (100% sucrose) = 8.85 ml (68 Brix) per liter
For 5 gall -> 8.85 ml x 3.785 l/gall x 5 = 167.5 ml of Muscat juice

I hope this helps. Good luck.

Steven"

Pretty much anything that's fermentable can be used to prime, you definitely want to know sugar content and at least be able to guess what types of sugar is there as some vary a bit in fermentability.

Honestly though the most important thing is to ensure a clean source, you take all of the steps to keep your beer it would suck to contaminate it because someone else wasn't as cautious.