# Sugar Limits In Primary Fermentation



## sepul (11/1/08)

Hey,

Was just wondering how much sugar I'm able to put in the initial fermentation without having issues with incomplete fermentation and/or high alcohol content damaging the yeast ?

Cheers.


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## MVZOOM (11/1/08)

trying to make rocketfuel?


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## brettprevans (11/1/08)

well most saf yeats can apparently survive up to about 12%. so use a brew calculator if your dead keen on it. I recon about 5kg total of adjunct would be the limit in a 22L brew

think about 1 tin of goo, and 3.5kg of dex or 1 tin of goo and 5kg of dried malt extract.

keep in mind unless you have a lot of buitterness to balance out the alcohol/malt its going to taste revolting.


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## braufrau (11/1/08)

citymorgue2 said:


> well most saf yeats can apparently survive up to about 12%. so use a brew calculator if your dead keen on it. I recon about 5kg total of adjunct would be the limit in a 22L brew
> 
> think about 1 tin of goo, and 3.5kg of dex or 1 tin of goo and 5kg of dried malt extract.
> 
> keep in mind unless you have a lot of buitterness to balance out the alcohol/malt its going to taste revolting.




And lots of sugar tastes revolting. I know there are people who disagree with me but one brewer I know insists that 
1kg of sugar is all you need with a kit and his brews taste like ... well ... taste like home brew! That's how HWMBO put it.
HWMBO used to do kit brews and he admitted to using a kg of sugar in his brews too and got the same taste. Its kinda like licorice.


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## Whistlingjack (11/1/08)

Why not get a still..

Put as much sugar as you like into the brew, then distill it.

Lets face it, a question like this means you are not serious about brewing beer.

WJ


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## Jazman (11/1/08)

Unless your are brewing a belgian


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## Whistlingjack (11/1/08)

Jazman said:


> Unless your are brewing a belgian



How much sugar would you use in a Belgian?

WJ


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## Adamt (11/1/08)

Yes I think the idea behind the question was "Kit and kilo? How about kit and 10 kilos?"

Screw it. Put 10 kg of sugar in it. When the yeast carks it from the alcohol you'll have plenty of sweetness left over which will stop you from tasting it until the morning.

Ferment it at 18C and it will be fine. <_<


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## brettprevans (11/1/08)

Whistlingjack said:


> How much sugar would you use in a Belgian?
> 
> WJ


gotta agree with WJ you dont use 4kg of sugar in a belgian. at least i hope not. f*ckn awful


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## chris.taylor.98 (12/1/08)

I go up to 20% for some of the stronger Belgians

I find that the whole "sugar" subject is much misunderstood and unfairly maligned.

You should not be afraid to use straight sucrose if you know what you are trying to achieve.

If you do you use it, you fill find it really dries the beer out due to its high fermentability, and does not leave much of the way of body behind.

The sugar bogeyman was created by the K&K manufacturing cretins that just want people to make oddles of crap beer no matter what it contains. ie they assume that because you drink homebrew you must me a bit of a moronic over consumer, so it doesn't really matter too much how it comes out.

Because you have made your way to this forum I'm going to assume otherwise. 

1kg of sugar with a can kit is usually a bad idea, but if you threw in a Belgian yeast strain instead of the generic ale it may not be nearly as bad.

I like to use it in some of the english ales to get a lot of dextrins and body, and still finish up quite dry. (Ever wondered why some of those styles are supposed to have lots of body by still finish dry?). And there is nothing wrong with throwing a bit more in if you want a bit more alcohol in your beer (as long as you remember the lower body and drier beer part).

That being said if you start going over 10% for anything but the Belgians you are going to start to notice it.

Anyway don't be too scared off using sugar, just understand what you are trying to do with it.

And to all you high alcohol bigots out there why is it that most of the BOS beers have OG above 1.070?

Whats wrong with a good old:

Russian Imperial Stout,
Strong Belgian Ale (light or dark),
Tripel,
Barelywine,
Doppelbock,
Weizenbock,
Eisbock,
Imperial IPA
Baltic Porter or
Scotch Ale,

every now or then?


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## braufrau (12/1/08)

Chris Taylor said:


> 1kg of sugar with a can kit is usually a bad idea, but if you threw in a Belgian yeast strain instead of the generic ale it may not be nearly as bad.



Actually the brew I was referring to was made with wyeast 3787 i.e. westmalle yeast!

I'm about to make a stout with 700g of sugar and that's about how much I put in tripels.

I invert the sugar because that makes me feel better. 
I haven't done 2 brews with and without inverting so I don't know if it makes a difference.


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## sepul (15/1/08)

I'm not trying to brew a beer with a ridiculously high alcohol content - that was not the question. So thank you citymorgue2 and Chris Taylor for actually contributing.

Chris Taylor - So you say a beer with more sugar (sucrose) will have less body and taste drier ? And will adding malt increase body ? How does the effect of dextrose compare with sucrose ?

Cheers.


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## brettprevans (15/1/08)

malt isnt fully fermentable so it leaves some residual body in the beer. dex is completely fermentable and will tend to make the beer watery in large amounts. sucrose/fructose/sugar are also not fully fermentable (but quite fermentable) but they often leave a weird taste, unless its used in a specific way for certain styles. eg a belgian. 

if you want body use maltodex (yanks call it corn syrup) or better still 100-200g of carapils and crystal in a brew. generaly malt will give you enough body. it depends on your brewing experiance and what your wanting to make as to what you use to create body.

sugar has a place in brewing but its a specific place and its not a prime ingredient. its used to compliment add flavbour, not be the main ingredient.


and as chris said theres nothing wrong with high alc beers if there is style ie RIS and Scottish (which I love to death)..actually I like all the ones chris listed except I havent tried an Eisbock yet. 

Chris - I loved your baltic porter by the way. i was so dissappointed that it was a stubby of it rather than a keg.


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## 0M39A (15/1/08)

my latest brew (ESB) i used near enough to 10% good old table sugar in it.

recipe was something along the lines of:

3kg light dried malt
200g 120ebc crystal
100g 60ebc crystal
300g white sugar
25g POR @ 60min
35g EKG @ 20min
35g EKG whirlpool

23L

safale s-04 

if i had some dextrose on hand i probably would have used that, but all i had besides sugar was more malt, and i didnt want to make it *too* malty, especially with a decent amount of crystal


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## sepul (17/1/08)

hmm okay interesting. Because malt isn't fermentable does this mean I shouldn't decrease the amount of sugar by the same amount of malt added ? (e.g. 500g malt and 500g sugar doesn't equate to 1KG of sugar in terms of alcohol content).

So if sugar (sucrose) isn't to be used as a primary ingredient, what should I be using with the aim of a nice middle of the road ale ? (In your opinion). One of my previous brews was Toohey's Real Ale kit w/ simply 1.2KG of raw sugar - that wasn't bad. With another (which isn't ready yet) I have tried a can of Toohey's Dark Ale with 750g raw sugar and 500g Cooper's brew enhancer No. 1 (contains maltodextrin and dextrose).


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## NRB (17/1/08)

If you just want to make better beer than a kit & kilo of table sugar, simply substitute dried malt extract for the same weight of sugar. It'll taste more "beery" and less "cidery". If you want a little more alcohol add a little more DME or dextrose, but remember dextrose will ferment 100% as Chris has described so succinctly, leaving a more "watery" and drier beer.


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## dr K (18/1/08)

Back when home brew was a baby the sugar bogeyman was born. There were many reasons and some are still applicable. To cut a long story short many of those off tastes, generally bucketed as "home brew" were put down to a single culprit..sugar. These early brewers were on the whole, extract brewers..I figure that even today there is more beer made in kits in Australia than mashed. The real problem was a witches cauldron of bad shirts..old extract, yeast past its best, cheesy hops....
Malt extract has low levels of FAN..free amino nitrogen, an essential beer yeast nutrient, old extract starts to oxidise and the FAN levels may drop as well so we start off with not the most viable yeast in a smaller than ideal pitch rate into a poor medium that at least has a fair whack of sucrose, the yeast lags too long, does not reproduce enough of its already paltry numbers, we get lots of fermentation problems and the off flavours from acetaldehyde to diacetyl and thats without an infection, sugar is called white death and things move on, the extract is fresh, the yeast viable, fermentation is done at lower temperatures the sun sets and rises etc but no-one forgets the scapegoat..sugar.
The "accepted" knowledge seems to be that the use of sucrose at the level that kit manufactures say to use will impart a cidery (?) taste to your beer. You can certainly get acetaldehyde (green apple) from a number of sources, mainly to do with fermentation but I have yet, over the last 6 or 7 years to be convinced that there is something specific about sucrose as opposed to maltose, dextrose, fructose and so on that will produce this "cidery taste"...the cidery taste is not a product of sucrose, it is a result of process.

K


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## brettprevans (18/1/08)

you should have a look at a good alc calculator and play around with it to see what a change of ingredients does.

beersmith - software
promash - software
liquorcraft - (about the only decent thing they have on the website)

there are few others listed on the site somewhere. do a search for 'alcohol calculator' or 'calculator'


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## sepul (20/1/08)

Thanks for the info guys. I'll check out those calculators too.

dr K - So avoiding the use of high levels of malt extract is a good start for avoiding acetaldehyde production. What else ?


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## boingk (22/1/08)

Hi there sepul - I think I know what you're talking about in terms of 'can I do X?' Well, I started out by using simple brewing sugars and wasnt impressed with the result personally. I moved onto light dried malt extract [LDME] and hop additions, and BAM! Thats when I started to think I was onto something. I generally don't add more than 300g of dextrose in a beer, and never use sugar because of the weird cidery, vegemitey taste it leaves behind. Heres an easy recipe I run up all the time, I find it to go down well with mates and is a generally good session beer: [skip the hop additions if you want, but they do benefit the final beer quite a lot]

'Country Skuller:'

1.7kg tin of 'lager kit',
650g LDME,
300g dextrose,
12g Pride of Ringwood @ 15 min.* 
*[Put hops in cup, pour boiling water over them. At end of 15 min give a swirl and throw the lot into the fermenter]

You can modify that towards a German style lager by adding 1kg of LDME to the lager kit and leaving out the dextrose, and substituting Hallertau hops for the PoR.

Cheers - boingk


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## sepul (27/1/08)

Thanks for that boingk. That's given me a good idea of where to go to from here. I'll try a version of your recipe. Is the brand/type of larger kit important at all ?


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## chris.taylor.98 (27/1/08)

Hi Sepul,

Firstly don't get too tied up too quickly on trying to perfect your brewing process.

Most of us started off where you are, and I think its good to try and not make it too complicated too early on.

As others have mentioned the simple act of replacing sugar additions with malt extract for the can kit will result in a much better beer.

Also malt (DME) is mostly fermentable, but also contains some many important elements required for healthy yeast production (such as FAN etc) that is missing in the more simple sugars. The malt also leaves some body behind which usually results in a more fuller and richer tasting beer ( as opposed to the watery thin taste you get with straight sugar ).

Unfortunately you don't really have any idea what has been put in the can kit (and they are doing it to make a profit, ie cheaper ingredients), and what sort of quality it is, so you need to assume its not going to be top notch. Hence the malt addition is a good start as at least you know it will improve the standard of the overall beer.

The next step is to start adding some hop additions, and from there dropping the can kits all together and making your own recipes. Some people never get this far and are still more than satisfied with the beer they produce.

Of course if you get hooked, you will eventually have to cross over to the dark side of all grain brewing  ... but that is another story.

So start with the malt extract, then move onto some extra hops, then when you start understanding (and have experienced) a bit more what is going on start moving to do your own thing and ditch the can kits.

Also a great way to explore craft brewing further is to get involved in homebrew club and of course keep posting on AHB.


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## justsomeguy (28/1/08)

Sepul,

You can actually add heaps of suger and get it to ferment. Whether it tastes any good is another matter as others have already indicated. The most I've added was 6kg. Used nearly 200gms of yeast on it as well. Smelt bloody awful, like a real cheap bottle of wine. I did actually taste the stuff as well. Very hot. Ok, I did have a reason for using so much suger. I ran it all through a, umm, let's call it a 'cleaning apparatus', shall we 

After 'cleaning' the residual stuff was a foul smelling liquid. Totally discusting.

If you want to use sugar when brewing I say 'go for it'. Its your beer so do what you like with it. If it doesn't taste the way you want just chuck it out and chalk it up to a lesson learned.

gary


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## sepul (31/1/08)

Chris Taylor - Thanks for that, it's given me a good idea of where I am and where I should be heading to improve my beer in the future.

justsomeguy - 6KG eh, that's a fair amount. Did you bottle it ?


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## shamus (1/2/08)

I made a batch with 2 cans and about 1.5kgs of sugar and after 6 months in the bottle is came out really nice...


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## RobboMC (1/2/08)

People should remember when they first started. When I went to buy my first kit I chose a Coopers Pale Ale. My charming wife saw on the shelves that there were TWO different Brew Enhancers and pointed out I should read the can to find out which one to get. My knees started shaking, Sh*t, I didn't know this brewing game was going to be so difficult!

Some of my ideas - Yes it does matter which brand of kit you buy. Coopers are well liked. Morgans are pretty good too. One UK company advertises on their can that they contain NO BARLEY SUGAR, ie made from 100% malt and hops. The brand is Muntons, and in my opinion the extra money is worth it. They are not cheap, but make great beer.

I guess you've got the message about sucrose, but I spent a week this summer drinking a friends bitter, made with just a Coopers bitter kit and a kg one sucrose. On a hot day it went down just fine, but's it's not GREAT beer, just beer.

My latest batch is kit and FOUR kg, a kg of DME, a KG of light liquid extract, a KG of flavoured extract and a KG of steeped crystal grain. This sort of thing ferments out with the kit yeast no worries, to about 6.5% alcohol. Thta's probably a good limit for starters, but you need lots of hops to balance the sweet malt.


For starters stick to about one KG of malt extract with a kit as a maximum. More than that and you need up to 50g of hops for extra hop bitterness, which isn't difficult, just a 30-40 minute boil with SOME of the malt extract. One of my favourite early brews is a can of pale ale, one kg of dry malt and 3/4 kg of brew enhancer. The brew enhancers are mostly dextrose, with some maltodextrin and malt added. Use the left over enhancer for priming. Makes a nice beer, and is about the limit before you need to start boiling in more hop bitterness. Dry malt often needs to be dissloved in boiling water.


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## 0M39A (1/2/08)

wtf *RobboMC*?

a *kilo* of crystal malt???


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