TOPIC:

Hi guys just a quick one is it possible to use table sugar for primary fermentation ? pound for pound table sugar & dextrose are more a less the same price , I was once caught short when using a kit IPA and had to shell out five euros for delivery of a bag of dextrose.
Cheers.

yea you can but when i was looking through the previous posts i saw it can affect the taste of the beer.

if your caught short you are better using glucose its dextrose with a different name, you can find it in the bakery section of a supermarket, not too sure how the price compares. Avoid getting it in a health shop they have vitamin c mixed in

If you're going to use a large percentage (>7-9%) of sugaer in a recipe you may actually want to use sucrose or invert sugars.

Many yeast strains have problems with fermenting more complex sugars once the percentage of simple monosacchrides gets too high. (Yeast generally ferment all the monosacchrides first and then switch them selves over to start fermenting more complex sugars.)

The sugar needs to be inverted in order to be consumed by the yeast, so you might be better off using something like lyle's golden (invert) sugar or inverting it yourself on an oven pan, but the yeast have invertase enzymes so they can technically invert it themselves. -It will take less time/energy for them to consume the sugar if it has been inverted ahead of time, though.


The issue of sugar producing cider-like flavors has pretty much been debunked as an early Papazian-era myth. Unless you're using an outrageous near 50% addition of sugar ala "kit and kilo" extract brewing you shouldn't have an issue.

P.S. Friends don't let friends brew "kit and kilo".



Adam

Sucrose is a disaccharide, meaning it's made of two simpler sugars, glucose and fructose.

Yeast has to break down sucrose first into glucose and fructose before it can consume it. It's no biggie really.

Dextrose is the American name for glucose.

One way sugar will affect your fermentation is the more you put in primary the lower you final gravity. This may impact on your final beer in a way that you don't want.

Or put simply: more sugar means more alcohol but less beer, as the malt and other ingredients contribute so much more to the beer than sugars alone.

"Tube":3h6579ci wrote: Dextrose is the American name for glucose.
[/quote:3h6579ci]

That's an interesting explanation I've never heard before and a pretty funny conclusion to come to.

If you think about the molecules in 2 dimensions they are essentially the same (both are C6H12O6), but 3 dimensionally different forms of glucose can exist; "D-glucose" is also known as "dextrose" and refers to a specific 3 dimensional configuration of the molecule that is "right-handed"$$ this is the only form of the sugar that exists in nature although "left-handed" forms of the molecule exist.

Some industries/disciplines seem to call it "dextrose" and some call it "glucose" but we're really all talking about the exact same thing at the end of the day; heck BrewTools calls it simply "Corn Sugar".

Definitely no big deal, but I'm yet to see a split on what to call it based upon country.





Adam

I don't remember exactly where I heard that, but when I started brewing first I was searching for dextrose, only to be told "oh, you'll only get dextrose in America, here have some glucose it's the same thing".

It has stood me well, as I no longer waste any time looking for dextrose!

Having said that I don't look for glucose either. Demerera sugar. If it's good enough for Deuchars Caledonian IPA[/url:1u9v3po3], it's good enough for me.