brewing sugars/enhancers

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mancer62

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Obviously it's nice to make brews as competitively priced as possible whilst hopefully maintaining decent quality. I would like to know what the difference is taste and ABV wise when using the following. based on say (21litres). I almost always make Stouts, Ales and IPA's.

If I used only 1kg brewing sugar to 21l ?
If I used 1kg enhancer to 21l?
If I used 500g brew sugar & 500g enhancer?
Or any other combinations u may advise...ty
 
In general terms the more malty stuff the better. Dextrose will simply ferment out to alcohol without taste/flavour addition.
You might find this useful for Coopers Enhancer as provided by @Pirate_Pete for Coopers products

  • Brew Enhancer 1 - 60% dextrose, 40% maltodextrin
  • Brew Enhancer 2 - 50% dextrose, 25% maltodextrin, 25% light dry malt
  • Brew Enhancer 3 - 50% light dry malt, 30% dextrose, 20% maltodextrin
As far as I am aware maltodextrin does not ferment out.
I used to use Youngs Beer Enhancer which I believe is/was 50:50 dextrose/spray malt
 
Obviously it's nice to make brews as competitively priced as possible whilst hopefully maintaining decent quality. I would like to know what the difference is taste and ABV wise when using the following. based on say (21litres). I almost always make Stouts, Ales and IPA's.

If I used only 1kg brewing sugar to 21l ?
If I used 1kg enhancer to 21l?
If I used 500g brew sugar & 500g enhancer?
Or any other combinations u may advise...ty

brewing sugar is dextrose/glucose

enhancer is dextrose/glucose + a small percentage of dme

So using either or sucrose will have exactly the same effect, tho a brew using enhancer may possibly perhaps have a hint of a tad of a bit more body but i doubt its noticable. but the result will be a thinner dryer brew than if only malt extract was used.

to make your own 'brewing sugar' invert sucrose by dissolving and boiling and adding citric acid, this will crack its 2 monosaccharides (glucose and fructose) making them marginally more accessible to the yeast.

Though i would suggest its a waste of time for a home brewer, commercial breweries where every hour in the Fermentor is expensive, invert and glucose are used to shave 6-12 hours off the primary fermentation stage, while home brewers are usually content to leave beer brewing in primary for a week or 2 and dont rush to decant within 3-4 days of pitching.
 
Your question has pretty much been answered. I would assume that quite a few of us on here started out making homebrew to save a few quid.
That was why I was brewing 30 years or more ago, and why I restarted recently.

What I would say is just work out how much per bottle extra you're paying for better ingredients and say a few hops.
I went from being a cheapskate and only using a kit and a kilo of dextrose to spending a bit more on a kit.
Then using a kilo of malt. Steeping a bit of grain and finally starting to add hops.

* mind you I've started buying malt in 20 kilo bags to bring the cost down.
 
Obviously it's nice to make brews as competitively priced as possible whilst hopefully maintaining decent quality. I would like to know what the difference is taste and ABV wise when using the following. based on say (21litres). I almost always make Stouts, Ales and IPA's.

If I used only 1kg brewing sugar to 21l ?
If I used 1kg enhancer to 21l?
If I used 500g brew sugar & 500g enhancer?
Or any other combinations u may advise...ty


The first one will taste worst.
The second one will taste best.
The third one will taste somewhere between the two.
 
brewing sugar is dextrose/glucose

enhancer is dextrose/glucose + a small percentage of dme

So using either or sucrose will have exactly the same effect, tho a brew using enhancer may possibly perhaps have a hint of a tad of a bit more body but i doubt its noticable. but the result will be a thinner dryer brew than if only malt extract was used.

to make your own 'brewing sugar' invert sucrose by dissolving and boiling and adding citric acid, this will crack its 2 monosaccharides (glucose and fructose) making them marginally more accessible to the yeast.

Though i would suggest its a waste of time for a home brewer, commercial breweries where every hour in the Fermentor is expensive, invert and glucose are used to shave 6-12 hours off the primary fermentation stage, while home brewers are usually content to leave beer brewing in primary for a week or 2 and dont rush to decant within 3-4 days of pitching.

Interesting..ref your reply...to make your own brewing sugar. You do realise that you are talking total ****, Please turn off your Google search page 2 monosa....blah blah
 
Interesting..ref your reply...to make your own brewing sugar. You do realise that you are talking total ****, Please turn off your Google search page 2 monosa....blah blah



perhaps you missed the inverted comma's, brewing sugars a term for monosaccharides. Inverting sucrose is a process of cracking sucrose into monosaccharides
 

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