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Dextrose vs Cane (table sugar)?
OK, I’m sorry if this has been asked (or even beaten to death) already but I only come up with a select few results when I search the website for this topic so please forgive me if I’m just not searching the correct word(s).
I am new to home brewing beer and have seen videos, recipes, and conversations, and so on about what kind of sugar to use when brewing. Is Dextrose sugars best to use because it is finer or is table sugar fine to use as well? Please, tell me what the big difference is in such a small batch (5 gallon). Will it differ from lagers, ales, porters etc. or is it just a science I need to find out what works best to my taste buds?
Thank you in advance for all your assistance and comments on this topic. I can’t wait to get started making my art and sharing it with family and friends!
Oh and my favorite beer is Henry Wienhard’s Belgian wheat beer (love that orange flavor)! Anyone have a recipe that will be close to that flavor that I can tweak to my likings?
What is your brewing process going to be? Maltose is the main sugar for brewing beer. The 2 easiest ways of usage is in the form of extracts, both Dry Malt Extract and Liquid Malt Extract. The other is to obtain the brewing sugars through an All Grain mash process.
Dextrose is a hard sugar for fermentability and dextrines are rarely included in a fermentable content, only displayed when a heavier beer is desired. Table sugar needs to be inverted for the yeast to consume, either before adding to the wort, or the yeast can invert it themselves, however it can stress them in this process, inverting is breaking down the glucose into fructose and sucrose. Most recipes will allow up to 20% invert simple sugars without getting squirrely, but much more than that will be off balance.
Without knowing your process it is very difficult to recommend a good wit recipe for you, but I would start by looking or asking at your LHBS or an online kit like http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewing/w … kit-2.html try brewing it once and seeing how you like it, then maybe mess with it the next time through to doctor up the fruit level.
thirsty wrote:
Dextrose is a hard sugar for fermentability and dextrines are rarely included in a fermentable content, only displayed when a heavier beer is desired. Table sugar needs to be inverted for the yeast to consume, either before adding to the wort, or the yeast can invert it themselves, however it can stress them in this process, inverting is breaking down the glucose into fructose and sucrose. Most recipes will allow up to 20% invert simple sugars without getting squirrely, but much more than that will be off balance.
Just a point of correction
Dextrose has no dextrines in it. Dextrose is just a fancier name for glucose. It is 100% fermentable and requires no extra processing by the yeast.
Table sugar is Sucrose. Sucrose is a combined molecule of one glucose and one fructose. While glucose is prefentially fermented over fructose in most conditions; both are completely fermentable. Invertase is an enzyme within yeast cells that breaks the sucrose apart into glucose and fructose.
Lastly, both glucose and fructose are more rapidly fermentable than maltose.
So to the original posters question. Either or will produce the same effects in your beer when used in reasonable amounts. Less than 20% of the total fermentables sounds like a good place to start.
brewchez wrote:
[Dextrose has no dextrines in it. Dextrose is just a fancier name for glucose. It is 100% fermentable and requires no extra processing by the yeast.
Table sugar is Sucrose. Sucrose is a combined molecule of one glucose and one fructose. While glucose is prefentially fermented over fructose in most conditions; both are completely fermentable. Invertase is an enzyme within yeast cells that breaks the sucrose apart into glucose and fructose.
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Whoo, thanks for picking up on that, you may have saved me some points for the exam coming up on saturday. I did not look these up, but went off the top of my head, so I need to get my sugars straight. good call.
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