Six weeks after bottling

[BigJohn]

Not to get too technical, but there are 3 types of sugar typically involved in "home brew" beer.
1 -Malt sugar. Either condensed as an extract or dried as a powder. This is the "beer" sugar.

2 - Corn Sugar. Powder or tablets, typically, but some will use syrups. Most often used to carbonate due to it's neutral flavor, but some folks will use it to "lighten" the beer color and flavor or bump the alcohol content.

3 - Refined "Table" sugars. Typically used in cheaper beers (commercially) as rice sugar, etc. or in "home brew kits" to replace a portion of Malt with a cheaper substituted. SOme commercial bears use SOME type of Sugar. Old Peculiar uses some Treacle. Other beers call for "raw" sugar (demera) or even brown or molasses)

Ok. these are listed in the order in which you should use them, except in the case where the STYLE you're brewing calls for some other Sugar (belgian golden ales, for example, want "candied sugar" - recrystallized rock candy sugar, basically).

You should almost always carbonate with Corn Sugar. A couple places make "fermentation tables" or slugs that you drop one or 2 into the bottle, fill it, cap it, and boom. Wait 2 weeks and enjoy. No measuring.

Or, dissolve corn sugar (or malt extract + 20% by weight) in warm water, and swirl your beer in the bottling bucket while slowly pouring the sugar mixture in. Need to make sure it's mixed REALLY GOOD or your first beers filled will over carbonate, the last ones will under carbonate. But don't "agitate the beer" to the point where oxygen is being absorbed.

Hope that helps!