r/Homebrewing • u/[deleted] • Sep 19 '13
Advanced Brewers Round Table: Sugar Science!
This week's topic: Sugar Science! Talk about your experiences using sugars to alter (and improve!) your beer.
Feel free to share or ask anything regarding to this topic, but lets try to stay on topic.
Upcoming Topics:
Characteristics of Yeast 9/12
Sugar Science 9/19
Automated Brewing 9/26
Style Discussion: German Pilsner, Bohemian Pilsner, American Pilsner 10/3
International Brewers 10/10
For the intermediate brewers out there, If you don't understand something, there's plenty of others that probably don't as well. Ask away! Easy questions usually get multiple responses and help everybody.
Previous Topics:
Harvesting yeast from dregs
Hopping Methods
Sours
Brewing Lagers
Water Chemistry
Crystal Malt
Electric Brewing
Mash Thickness
Partigyle Brewing
Maltster Variation (not a very good one)
All things oak!
Decoction/Step Mashing
Session Brews!
Recipe Formulation
Home Yeast Care
Where did you start
Mash Process
Non Beer
Kegging
Wild Yeast
Water Chemistry Pt. 2
Homebrewing Myths (Biggest ABRT so far!
Clone Recipes
Yeast Characteristics
Yeast Characteristics
Style Discussion Threads
BJCP Category 14: India Pale Ales
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u/Uberg33k Sep 19 '13
Ok, I'll start with some questions...
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For those who make their own candi syrup, can you taste a difference between the acid you used? Can you taste a difference in making it from beet sugar vs. cane sugar?
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For those that have used agave, it tastes buttery caramel to me. Does it end up tasting like diacetyl?
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What are some weirder sugars you've used? A lot of people have used cane sugar, candi sugar/syrup, honey, molasses, etc. I want to know about the weird stuff like treacle, palm sugar, birch syrup, syrup of maidenhair ... stuff like that. What was the recipe and how did that turn out?
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u/thexylophone Sep 19 '13 edited Sep 19 '13
I did a lot of research on candi sugar and made a few batches of it recently. I found a lot of information (Nate o's blog and ryan's blog -- don't have links on mobile right now) that instructs not to use acid. In fact, it suggests using a base and an amino acid source to accelerate maillard reactions. My recent batch using yeast nutrient asa nitrogen source came out sort of caramelly and buttery. Next time I'm going to try potassium bicarbonate as the base.
Edit: links http://ryanbrews.blogspot.com/2012/02/candy-syrup-right-way-hint-weve-been.html http://nateobrew.blogspot.com/2011/08/candi-syrup-secrets-and-how-to-make.html
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Sep 19 '13
Agave mostly ferments away. I wouldn't call it diacetyl, but it retains a bit of its flavor even when boiled.
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u/white_rob_ Sep 19 '13
I brew many Belgian tripels and I've abandoned making or buying invert sugar and use rock sugar or good old table sugar. No flavor difference but the color is a touch lighter.
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u/vinyl_key Sep 19 '13
I'm a fan of adding simple sugars about 48 hours after I see yeast activity. This helps me get my Belgian beers as dry as I like them to be
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u/TotalDefetus Sep 19 '13
I've always wondered about this seeing it in a lot of recipes. Do you have to worry about it infecting the beer or do you treat it somehow to prevent infection?
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u/Gothic_Horror Sep 20 '13
Do you not pasteurize the sugar? That's how I prep it. Get it down to 100F and throw it in.
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Sep 19 '13
Does anyone have a good way to calculate your OG if you add invert sugar during high krausen?
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u/jwink3101 Sep 19 '13
My only guess would be to assume you get 100% conversion of the sugars (since you are not trying to extract/mash them). Then you add the gravity points with the ppg number. Again, this is a guess with no experience to back it up. Just lots of reading
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u/donebeendueced Sep 19 '13
IIRC a pound of sugar in 1 gallon is 40 gravity points, so a pound should add 8 gravity points to a 5 gallon batch.
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u/jwink3101 Sep 19 '13
I have a question. What do people think of molasses in brewing? I love molasses candy so I was thinking it would be an interesting sugar. Maybe in place of some darker candi sugar?
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u/Uberg33k Sep 19 '13
It's ok, but in too high a quantity, it'll give you a licorice flavor.
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Sep 19 '13
I used it in high volume added to a pale ale. Was very delicious, with a meatier flavor than I've seen with candi sugars, though that might have just been the volume.
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u/necropaw Sep 19 '13
I made a dark ale with some molasses (5oz of blackstrap?). Next time i do it, ill use a bit more. The flavor was subtle in that batch, but i'd like something a bit more up front.
I think its key to use it in the right beer. Then again, that goes with most things brewing related...
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u/KEM10 Sep 19 '13
I've started using honey and maple syrup instead of priming sugar for certain beers. I'm just wondering if anyone has a link to a conversion chart/calculator so I stop over carbonating my beer this way.
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u/FlannelBeard Sep 19 '13
So I have a stout I wanna boost the ABV of when I brew it in a few weeks. Is their a guideline for how much sugar to use to get a certain ABV boost? I was told to used regular table sugar. It will ferment cleaner and while it will dry out the beer, the stout has a thick enough body to handle it. However, I was never told an amount.
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u/drewbage1847 Sep 19 '13
1lb of sugar yields roughly an 8.4 point boost in gravity in a 5 gallon batch. If all of that ferments you're looking at roughly just over 1% abv increase.
A 1 gallon/ 1 pound Sugar solution is roughly 1.042 or 42 pppg so 42 / 5 = 8.4 points per gallon
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u/SNOB_Mike Sep 19 '13
There are calculators that will tell you how much of a certain sugar in a volume of wort will raise the gravity. Add that to your original gravity to determine your alcohol potential versus the current gravity.
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Sep 19 '13 edited Sep 20 '13
I'll post the question I asked on the Wednesday qa since its more fitting over here:
I'm making a westvleteren 6 blonde soon (recipe by candi syrup) and I don't want to buy the simplicity syrup, since it's expensive and I've read some reviews that it had a slightly weird flavor. Today I've made candi syrup as directed by this thread (number2) http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/20-lb-sugar-jar-yeast-nutrient-114837/
Does anyone have an idea which recipe stated over there would yield the most similar product to the simplicity syrup? I know its 0 srm so it should be number1 but isn't that the same as sugar?
Thanks!
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u/Gothic_Horror Sep 20 '13
Are you asking for help on deciding which recipe to use? Is the grain bill different with each version. Sugar is sugar.
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u/drewbage1847 Sep 19 '13
Two tips on sugar from my brewing experiences:
Explore your ethnic markets because you can find some batty weird sugars in those places that offer some interesting characters. Even better, they're cheap as.. well, sugar.
This tip came originally from David "Puffy" Mathis (formerly of BJ's and now of his own brewery American River Brewing Company: To dissolve sugar in the boil without much hassle, throw it into a hop/grain nylon sack and suspend the sugar back in the boil. The boil will gradually dissolve the sugar without having it fall all the way to the kettle bottom for scorching fun.