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I'd appreciate a little input on "Priming": How do you do it? Which sugars do you use? Do you use it for all your beers and if not for which ones?

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up vote 3 down vote accepted

You need to prime all your beers that you plan to carbonate in the bottle. An alternative to this would be to bottle prior to the ferment finishing and let the residual activity carbonate the beer. This technique is not advisable for the math challenged and novice brewer. It requires careful attention to the fermentation and a lot of experience with the same recipe and yeast strain to get SAFE and predictable results.

Priming can be acheived with any fermentable sugar source one choses: Table sugar
Corn sugar
Maple syrup
Agave syrup
Malt extracts

The amount one uses depends on the potential extract for each type of sugar.
BYO magazine has a nice write up online for three simple sugar sources.
TastyBrew has a nice calculator which lets you pick your beer style and gives you the amount needed for a couple simple sugars or DME.

In general one can assume an extract potential of ~1.033 for most simple sugars.
A simple description on the math of extracts can be found at here.

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Excellent answer. Very helpful, as usual. Thanks a lot. – Tobi Apr 13 '10 at 17:16

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