Coopers Wheat beer - priming sugar

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gjs

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Hello.

I am about to bottle my Coopers Wheat Beer, but been pondering over what to use to prime it. My experience of home brewing so far is merely a few kits and I've only used cane sugar so far to prime the bottles, but looking at the best ways to improve these kits without busting the bank too much.

I've got white cane sugar, but also have got some glucose powder that I bought from a health food shop. The glucose powder is dextrose monohydrate 99.95% and 0.05% vitamin C.

Is this glucose powder okay to us and should I use it instead of the sugar? Will the vitamin c cause any problems, or can i just kid myself that it is now ahem, a 'healthy' drink?! But also, does it matter - sugar or glucose? I get the impression that glucose powder will ferment and carbonate quicker, which would be handy as hoping to drink some at Christmas, and that cane sugar is 100% fermentable so shouldnt leave any flavours (or very little) but wanted to check what peoples thoughts were on one versus the other and whether my understanding is correct. Cane sugar is cheap but a false economy if it adds an off-flavour to the beer, and this glucose powder costs a bit more but if it is the same product as brewing sugar but called something different, it works out cheaper from health food shops than what it is called in the local home brew shop, so would be good to use that if it will improve things over sugar. Or another thought, is there any other type of sugar that is ideal for this particular kit?

I look forward to any thoughts or advice given.


Regards,



Greg
 
hi , i would just use cane sugar , i have primed with many things and you won't notice as there too little to make a difference, i would aim for 150g for a 23l of wheat beer.
 
pittsy said:
hi , i would just use cane sugar.

+1 I've used cane sugar with this and all my kits for priming, seems fine.

BTW, how do you intend brewing the Wheat Beer? I've seen a few postings where people don't rate this kit, but I did mine with Wheat Malt Extract instead of sugar, and with a tea made up of the zest of 5 large oranges and half a pot of corander seeds crushed up, and all boiled up. Came out great. :D
 
darrellm said:
pittsy said:
hi , i would just use cane sugar.

+1 I've used cane sugar with this and all my kits for priming, seems fine.

BTW, how do you intend brewing the Wheat Beer? I've seen a few postings where people don't rate this kit, but I did mine with Wheat Malt Extract instead of sugar, and with a tea made up of the zest of 5 large oranges and half a pot of corander seeds crushed up, and all boiled up. Came out great. :D
excellent idea , yes it is er lacking shall we say im afraid but doing what you did would improve it lots :thumb:
 
We brewed to 21L with 1kg enhancer and it was lovely. Very clean tasting, almost no bitterness, but ridiculously smooth and comforting. An all round winner, but admittedly it has no real personality...
 
Thanks for the warm welcome and replies.

I'll go with the advice here and stick with the cane sugar for priming as it seems the common view is that it wont make any difference to the flavour due to the relatively small amount being used. Does anyone think glucose would be any quicker though? I'm happy to wait and not being impatient, but wondering if that would be a benefit?

I brewed the kit using the Coopers light spray malt (500g) as recommended by the instruction leaflet which seemed to really push for that to be used unlike other kits I've brewed that just suggest using a load of sugar. I do get the impression all of the Coopers kits are like that though. The instructions also mentioned to use 300g sugar/dextrose but I did a bit of searching for other people's experiences and some received advice that they didn’t think this would be anywhere near enough sugars, so I ahem, boosted that up with some sugar/glucose. Not sure if I made the right decision there but it didn’t feel right to be only using 800g of sugar/spray malt and impulse got the better of me.

I did also read about suggestions similar to what darrellm has mentioned regarding the use of coriander seeds and orange peel. I was very tempted to do that but not having a lot of experience made me want to use a standard recipe, see how that comes out and then have a fiddle about with subsequent kits to see what difference it makes over the stock recipe. Now I am contradicting myself a bit here as I mucked about with the sugar quantities, but I thought that adding other ingredients would be too much for my experience and if it went pear-shaped there would be too many factors for me to know what caused it. I do kind of think I should have gone down the orange peel & coriander route as it makes a lot of sense for a drink like this, but too late now so never mind!

The beer is finished up at 4.9%, which is a bit lower than I’d hoped although I guess that will nudge up about 0.5% after bottle conditioning. Can anyone offer any advice on whether this beer will benefit from a longer bottle conditioning? I found with other bitters/IPAs that they improved a lot with a few months in the bottle but wondered if it would be the same with a wheat beer, or not needed.

Thanks all for the help. I have to say all this typing is making me thirsty......!

Regards,

Greg
 
Wheat beers are good after a month of conditioning and won't benefit .much from any further ageing, one of their main advantages really! At that quantity, its pretty trivial that any difference will be made. I primed an IPA with sugar the other day and already have good pressure, even after a few hours, so don't worry about it. Although German beer purity laws do dictate that you have to prime with malt extract, if you're gonna get really into it :p

The only time I would suggest otherwise is priming a mead with honey, or stouts etc with treacle...
 
Thanks for that Rob.

Ive bottled it now using cane sugar to prime. I was surprised to see how clear it was, and how little gunk there was at the bottom of the FV. Is that a good or bad thing, or just normal for a wheat beer?

It is good news that it wont benefit from a lot of time bottle conditioning as if it turns out okay i want to give some away to family as part of the christmas hampers so the quicker the better in this case.

Cheers,


Greg.
 
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