Brewing Sugar

[Hopperty]

Brewing Sugar, Dextrose, Spray Malt - are these all the same things ?

Can any of these be bought at super markets etc or are they normally only available through brewing suppliers ?

how long does it keep and how do you keep it ?

5kg would last me a year - is that too long /

would this be ok
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Brewing-...=153182867595755e845b54574b57b30ce211bacabbe9£3 a kg seems a more sensible price but is the above link stuff OK ?

 

[Drunkula]

Brewing Sugar, Dextrose, Spray Malt - are these all the same things ?

No.

Can any of these be bought at super markets

No.

how long does it keep and how do you keep it ?

Forever dry.

5kg would last me a year - is that too long

No.

£3 a kg seems a more sensible price but is the above link stuff OK ?

Yes.

 

[Hopperty]

Thanks for the reply

But when it comes to brewing beer what is the difference between Brewing Sugar, Dextrose, Spray Malt

 

[marshbrewer]

Dextrose - a simple sugar, usually made from maize / corn (usually) which is chemically identical to glucose. This differs from table sugar, sucrose, in that sucrose is 1:1 ratio of glucose and fructose that are chemically bonded together: Fructose is a simple sugar mainly found in plants such as fruit. Fascinating, huh? Na, it isn't. However, yeast has to do a bit more work with table sugar. To quote the marketing stuff;

'Brewing sugar is Dextrose Monohydrate. The main difference in the use is that it is a Mono Saccharide (one molecule of glucose) as opposed to household sugar which is a Di-saccahide (2 molecules). This means that fermentation using brewing sugar will start quicker and ferment cleaner. Normal household sugar has to be 'split' by the yeast which produces bi-products and impurities. These bi-products can have a taste which may slightly affect the taste of home brewed drinks. We recommend using brewing sugar for optimum results.'

Now sit back and await a heated debate as to if this is really applicable on the homebrew scale. I shall offer no opinion.

Spray Malt is spray dried malt extract, i.e. malted barley is mashed, as it would be if you were all grain brewing from scratch, ten the resultant liquid is boiled / spray dried into a power that you can re-hydrate at home to give you lovely barley based wort. Its basically a dried version of liquid malt extract, a hopped version of which is what you get in the brewing kit cans. Some people think that spray malt, or dried malt extract (DME) gives better results than using liquid malt extract. Again, I shall offer no opinion.

Malt extract can come in a number of 'colours' - extra pale / light. pale / light, medium, dark, extra dark. The more colourful ones have had other grains added at the mashing stage to give their different colours and flavours, exactly like you would in your mash tun at home if you were all grain brewing. Some people use the different types for convenience, some people start with pale and steep speciality grains as part of their brewing process to get the type of resultant wort they want.

Hope that helps.

 

[terrym]

Brewing sugar and dextrose are the same. Spray malt is dried malt extract (DME).
Dextrose will ferment out fully with no flavour except to add alcohol dryness to the taste.
Malt extract both liquid and dry adds maltiness to the beer but dont ferment out fully so may add a little sweetness as well. As you increase the colour of malt extract you start to introduce darker malt flavours. If you make a variety of beer its best to go for light ME imo.

 

[Hopperty]

yes that did help - Thankyou.


I believe there is a difference in taste between cheap white granulated and the brewing sugars, can't quite explain the difference but I prefer the later - hence just buying 5kg of the stuff. Does seem stupidly expensive though (I guess its the postage)

 

[marshbrewer]

Malt miller have it at £10.49 (plus postage), it might also be worth looking in fitness / sports places like bulkpowders. However, once you have added postage, it all seems to come in around £15 for 5kg. I suppose the advantage of places like malt miller is that you can add other brewing goodies to your order to offset the postage cost.

 

[terrym]

yes that did help - Thankyou.
I believe there is a difference in taste between cheap white granulated and the brewing sugars, can't quite explain the difference but I prefer the later - hence just buying 5kg of the stuff. Does seem stupidly expensive though (I guess its the postage)

Table sugar is fine for priming. You really don't need anything else. Increasing amounts of table sugar as part of the primary fermentation sugars is said to introduce a cidery taste. Some folks don't notice it, others do. I tend not to use more than about 200g table sugar in a beer of 20litres or so, if I use any at all. If you are making darker beers you could use Golden Syrup instead of dextrose or table sugar, although in lighter beers you might notice the taste.

 

[LED_ZEP]

Try an experiment. Make up a gallon of wash with each of the different sugars to the same OG (you'll need a little more dextrose than table sugar to achieve this). Add the same amount of yeast and nutrient to each and keep all other conditions the same, temp, fermenting vessel etc. Not only will you be able to compare the taste of the final product but the speed of ferment and final gravity.

I've made many a sugar wash i.e water, table sugar, yest and nutrient (the reason why I can't mention on here). I've never noticed any "cidery" taste when it's finished. In fact apart form a yeasty taste it;s pretty nondescript and dry. I used to use dextrose but stopped paying the extra when I realised there was no difference in taste (to my palate) between the two in the resulting wash.

 

[johncrobinson]

You naughty naughty boy LED_ZEP

In wine-making we use sucrose IE table sugar.No-one complains about "unnatural" sugars.

I am however willing to admit that in beer/lager making their might well be a (big) difference.

 

[Galena]

What is the difference between refined and unrefined cane sugar, so far as the brewer is concerned?

 

[johncrobinson]

Basically the more refined a sugar is the whiter it is.
Also the less of its own taste it contributes.
Its a big subject is sugar as there are many,many differing fruit sugars most however are ferment-able into alcohol.

 

[johncrobinson]

Whats known as brewing sugar has previously been inverted,This refers to the direction of light polarization of a solution (saves the yeast from doing it ) allowing for slightly higher alcohol concentrations.

Brewing beer is a bit different as some of the best beer yeasts have lost the ability to handle differing sugars and need to be fed with the right stuff.
TBH you could fill a book just about sugar,I cant do it justice in a reply on a thread.

 

[DavidDetroit]

yes that did help - Thank you. I believe there is a difference in taste between cheap white granulated and the brewing sugars, can't quite explain the difference but I prefer the later - hence just buying 5kg of the stuff. Does seem stupidly expensive though (I guess its the postage)

As you mentioned, some can tell the difference. I have made a ton of Belgian Tripels using the Belgian candied syrup--the clear one---and Belgian rock sugar. Very pricey. I switched to 1.36 kg of table sugar. That is a lot of table sugar but the recipe also calls for 3.63 kg of DME (you call it spray malt, I think?). So the recipe has a ton of sugar and maybe the DME hides the table sugar. I don't notice a difference in the beer.
As an aside, I practice making the syrup and the rock sugar once in a while but I'm not very good at it so far.

 

[Drunkula]

Normal household sugar has to be 'split' by the yeast which produces bi-products and impurities. These bi-products can have a taste which may slightly affect the taste of home brewed drinks.

You got the reference for this? I've been trying to get details on the taste perception of invertase for ages and can't find faff all.

 

[terrym]

Whats known as brewing sugar has previously been inverted,This refers to the direction of light polarization of a solution (saves the yeast from doing it ) allowing for slightly higher alcohol concentrations.

Brewing beer is a bit different as some of the best beer yeasts have lost the ability to handle differing sugars and need to be fed with the right stuff.
TBH you could fill a book just about sugar,I cant do it justice in a reply on a thread.

I thought the stuff sold by homebrew shops and similar as 'brewing sugar' was pure dextrose alias glucose which typically came from processing 'corn' (maize).
'Brewers sugar' used by breweries is (and certainly was) based on invert syrup, which is different. Typically see in here
https://ragus.co.uk/product-finder/results

 

[johncrobinson]

Making invert sugar improves the ferment ability.

Paradoxically going a bit further with the Maynard reaction to get Belgium candy renders some of the sugars unusable by the yeast,But adds a lot of "fruit" flavours.

 

[johncrobinson]

You are quite correct Terrym

Sugar properties vary according to the source and should be taken into account when brewing.

Because of yeast dynamics sugar plays a somewhat different role in beers than in wines.

 

[marshbrewer]

What is the difference between refined and unrefined cane sugar, so far as the brewer is concerned?

Refined sugar is just pure sugar. Unrefined sugar contains stuff from the sugar cane that is normally refined out, such as molasses. Thus it is darker, and has an actual taste of it's own.

 

[Galena]

Refined sugar is just pure sugar. Unrefined sugar contains stuff from the sugar cane that is normally refined out, such as molasses. Thus it is darker, and has an actual taste of it's own.

Thanks