Sugar/Brewing sugar/Spray Malt??

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timcunnell

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Hey guys
So as some of you may have read, I am having another crack at brewing after losing my mojo with a run of bad batches. All going well so far! Despite being really hot I have managed to fashion a water jacket for my FV, and the thing is bubbling away beautifully!
So while I've got time to ponder things, I was wondering what the thoughts were on what to use for the secondary fermentation? When I was a proper beginner I used normal sugar, and since heard others say that this can contribute to that homebrew tang, and I was put on to using brewing sugar. My latest kit though says to use spray malt.
So I was just wondering what the story is really. Do you get better results using spray malt than sugar??
 
Hey guys
So as some of you may have read, I am having another crack at brewing after losing my mojo with a run of bad batches. All going well so far! Despite being really hot I have managed to fashion a water jacket for my FV, and the thing is bubbling away beautifully!
So while I've got time to ponder things, I was wondering what the thoughts were on what to use for the secondary fermentation? When I was a proper beginner I used normal sugar, and since heard others say that this can contribute to that homebrew tang, and I was put on to using brewing sugar. My latest kit though says to use spray malt.
So I was just wondering what the story is really. Do you get better results using spray malt than sugar??

Simply put yes, spray malt is like dehydrated wort (unhopped) so it will improve the flavour body and even head retention.

It is of course more expensive
 
Ah okay thanks mate. That does make sense.

I was going to order some bottling equipment today anyway (and some Starsan!!) so I reckon I will just order some spraymalt too while I'm at it.
 
Just following on from this point on using spray malt instead of sugar for the second ferment...
In the past when I've been using brewing sugar, I've always added about 80g of the stuff to a cup of boiling water, then put that in the bottom of my pressure barrel and siphoned in the beer. I've always thought this was a good idea because it'd sterilise anything in the sugar.
So my question is, should I do the same thing with spray malt?
Sorry this is probably a daft question to be fair!!
 
you can do although you will typically need more spraymalt not sure of the conversion off the top of my head.

BUT sugar is going to be fine for priming, a lot of people do All grain and still use sugar to prime.. I do
 
Ah okay mate thanks for that.
Until now I have only ever kegged my brews - and that has not gone well the last 3 times (with infections). So partly due to this, and partly due to the warm weather, I am going to have a crack at bottling this time. And the plan is to use a secondary with a tap, and bottle from there. So I was planning to prime the whole 23 litres in the secondary, rather than individually prime each bottle. Hopefully that should be okay? I just wasn't sure if it was okay to bung the spray malt straight in?
 
Ah okay mate thanks for that.
Until now I have only ever kegged my brews - and that has not gone well the last 3 times (with infections). So partly due to this, and partly due to the warm weather, I am going to have a crack at bottling this time. And the plan is to use a secondary with a tap, and bottle from there. So I was planning to prime the whole 23 litres in the secondary, rather than individually prime each bottle. Hopefully that should be okay? I just wasn't sure if it was okay to bung the spray malt straight in?

What I do with my priming is whatever I prime with. (spray malt or brewers sugar) I boil in a little water and cool it, into a sanitised bottling bucket with a tap having purged bucket with co2 first. I auto-syphon from the FV onto the priming mixture which reduces chance of oxidation and it automatically mixes in the bucket.

I have used a warmed up bottle of rasbberry/cherry syrup instead with no boiling as the bottles were unopened and that worked ok. With a bottling wand on the end of the bottling bucket tap it works out very well, albeit it takes a while to fill 40 bottles.:roll:
 
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