carbonation drops

I've mentioned before that I've had trouble getting standard levels of carbonation in my bottles since moving to Hawaii. Some bottles come out flat, and others are so over-carbonated that the whole beer foams out of the bottle when you pry off the crown. One theory I've developed, as a possible reason for this irregular carbonation, is that the bottles end up with varying levels of priming sugars. Typically, I'll melt some priming sugar in with a cup or two of water, and add that to the carboy immediately before bottling. I'm wondering if the that sugar doesn't mix in evenly with the unbottled beer. Perhaps it sinks to the bottom of the carboy and then gets sucked out by the syphon, so that the first several bottles get more of the sugar than the last few bottles.

In order to test this theory, I've bottle my last two batches using carbonation drops for the priming. The way they work is you add one drop per 12 oz bottle, or two drops for a bottle 22 oz or bigger. The amount of sugar per bottle should be pretty even, using this system. And so far it seems to be playing out. I've been drinking bottles from the first batch, and so far they've all been perfectly carbonated.

The downside is that the carbonation drops end up costing around 10X more than just buying sugar and mixing it in with the whole batch. But in the end that's still just an extra 10 cents a bottle. If I can do away with one more brewing difficulty, 10 cents a bottle is worth it to me.