# Does Beer Have Sugar In It



## fergi (28/4/12)

i know it sounds like an easy answer, but one of the guys at golf made a statement that beer is 30 percent sugar,
i have a 6 pack on this and my answer was it doesnt have any sugar added its only the sugar from barley that it contains, and its not 30 percent.then he went on to say that sucrose/dextrose are sugars, yes they are but they are not added , not including KK or specialty beers.

his original statement was it is made up of 30 percent sugar, this was in relation to the fact i said i didnt want to drink coke because of the added sugar.

he has changed his story a bit now looking at google and seeing malted barley produces, "SUGAR" but his original statment still stands as far as i am concerned,
what do you think.

fergi


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## Kranky (28/4/12)

Yes it has sugars in it but the amount of sugars is very variable. The mash temperature(s), the yeast, the fermenting temperature and the different types of malt used all play a part - and that is just for starters.

If dextrose is added it is fully fermentable (usually) so the yeast eat it all - so it affects abv not sugar content. 

To suggest that all beers are 30% sugar is pretty silly. if that is what was said.


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## kelbygreen (28/4/12)

well, its a tough one as you extract the sugar out of the grains so he may be right.

No to down on the science of what grain turns into and what % this is in the wort (would be recipe dependent of coarse) 

But a sugar is of 2 types

Monosaccharides, Which is glucose, fructose and galactose

Disaccharides, which is sucrose, maltose and lactose.

So if you determine how much of them is in the beer and at what % you will get your answer


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## dr K (28/4/12)

I think you have a lot to learn.
Wort (not beer yet )may be say 10% sugar, those sugars being for all grain mainly maltose and commercial breweries may make 30% of their sugar bill up from sucrose.
Our friendly yeast converts these sugars int (eventually) alcohol, it does not covert all sugars (for exammple lactose) and indeed of itself does not convert sucrose, it has a handy little enzyme, invertase, that splits the di-saccharide sucrose into the mono saccarhides glucose and fructose.
Yeast will also run out of power before it coverts all the sugars so ther will be some residual sugar, but given that wort is far less than 30% sugar to start with, and that most of that sugar gets converted to our buzzy friend, you have a six pack coming your way.
Holed out in one.

K


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## bum (28/4/12)

> Joined: 20-October 04



You've been brewing for 8 years, maybe more. Why don't you already know what beer is made of?


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## kelbygreen (28/4/12)

but did he mean it has had 30% sugar added or it has 30% sugar left in solution??? the sugar will be turned into many things and carbs are one so this may be his standing point! I am not sure.


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## dr K (28/4/12)

Derrrr
Sugar is a carbohyrate to start of with
In the fermentation process a fair whack of the carbon and oxygen get split off (sorry thats very crude) to form CO2, yes beer will still contain carbohydrates but as sugar is one already it hardly gets converted (or turned)

K


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## winkle (28/4/12)

This is what LN sayes about one of its lagers.


> XXXX BITTER is a traditional Australian Lager with a clean, crisp taste and a satisfying after-bitterness. It is made from true Australian raw materials, including unique golden cluster hops, pure Queensland cane sugar, malt and barley. Each brew is the result of bottom-fermentation at low temperatures to produce a full flavour.



or the green stuff,



> Like most Australian Lagers, VB is made using a wortstream brewing process, and uses a portion of cane sugar to thin out the body of the beer.



Which is what your mate was refering to I guess, 30% sounds high but....


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## fawnroux (28/4/12)

Whose beer??

Is your mate being general and saying all beer? Or does he mean the mass produced beers? If he means macro lagers, then yes, they add sugar. Maybe even 30% adjunct, who knows. That ferments out first though.

Or does he mean, that there is 30% residual sugars left in your beer? If so, then no, there is not 30% sugar. A beer with an OG of 1.048 has about 12g sugar(s) per 100g wort, so, if it ferments down to about 1.012, there is about 3g left. So a 330ml beer should have about 10g residual sugar in it. Hardly 30%....

Do you get to pick the 6 pack? :chug:


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## fergi (28/4/12)

kelby his original statement was really that it has as much sugar as a can of coke that i didnt want to drink, 

most of the sugars that were extracted from the grain have been converted into alcahol, dont know how much sugar beer has left in it after the yeast has gone to work but as DK said ,its far less than 30 percent to start with, golf buddy is saying the finished beer has 30 percent sugar , same as coke, not a chance.

fergi


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## fergi (28/4/12)

thefawnroux said:


> Whose beer??
> 
> Is your mate being general and saying all beer? Or does he mean the mass produced beers? If he means macro lagers, then yes, they add sugar. Maybe even 30% adjunct, who knows. That ferments out first though.
> 
> ...


 

yep he is saying its got the same amount of sugar left in it as coke.
i doubt i get to pick the 6 pack, he is a farmer, they are pretty tight with their coin, but they are always right, never wrong.


fergi


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## pyrosx (28/4/12)

I reckon, given that the "beer" this "guy at golf" is referring to is the beer lovingly known around these parts as megaswill, that he's actually, almost, kind of right - there's a fair chance that standard aussie lager contains a fair proportion of plain ol' sugar in it's grain bill. 30% is probably a bit on the high side - but i'd not say it's completely out of the question. So he may be right... sort of.

Thing is - by the time the yeast does it's thing - i.e. converts sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide (i.e. fermentation) - there won't be much of ANY sugar left - regardless of whether it came from malt, table sugar, or anything in between.

Finally though (and I'm assuming that you were actually drinking beer when you said that about soft drink, so if i'm off base here, i apologise) - you're absolutely ******* kidding yourself if you think that drinking beer is in any way better for you than drinking soft drink "because of the added sugars" in the latter. There's just so many things wrong with this, it's not funny. For starters - Alchohol contains more calories, gram for gram, than sugar. And this is a horrible over simplification, but in essence, as far as your body is concerned: sugar is a basic building block of life; alchohol is essentially a poison.


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## Tony (28/4/12)

I used to work in a starch plant that made Dextrose, maltodextrin (corn sugar) and glucose. They made a very thin watery glucose (easy to handle) for one of the big boys...... wont say who. It was for beer.

So this was actually wheat starch, that was converted via enzymes to a clear sugary syrup that was being purchased in bulk for beer production.

I never used a drop of it ....... but the evil mega-swill factory did..... and lots of it.

It was essentially liquid sugar with a controlled fermentablity via its conversion process. 

So..... when it comes right down to it..... "beer" is a broad term to be saying it contains this and that. Id say some megaswill beers contain close of that, but anything worth drinking wont.

And... i agree with bum...... dude you owe us all a 6 pack of LCPA for asking this. You have been on here almost as long as me :blink:


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## pk.sax (28/4/12)

I know Carlton is made from beer


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## pyrosx (28/4/12)

practicalfool said:


> I know Carlton is made from beer



Only if you squint and hold your nose


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## fawnroux (28/4/12)

fergi said:


> yep he is saying its got the same amount of sugar left in it as coke.



Well, i think coke has about 10.6g sugar per 100ml (or around 1.042 if you prefer :icon_cheers


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## pk.sax (28/4/12)

pyrosx said:


> Only if you squint and hold your nose


The billboards tell me it's sered by cheerleaders. I'm interested.



thefawnroux said:


> Well, i think coke has about 10.6g sugar per 100ml (or around 1.042 if you prefer :icon_cheers


ferment test?!


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## fawnroux (28/4/12)

practicalfool said:


> ferment test?!



:beer: mmm, coke beer...


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## fergi (28/4/12)

well as usual some of you guys are obviously pissed by now and cant be bothered reading the original few posts, sure beer has sugars , how the **** would the yeast make alcohol if it didnt, 
the argument was my mate is saying a glass of beer has as much sugar in it as a can of coke finished product, a can of coke has about 7 teaspoons of the stuff in it, what bloody beer are you drinking that has still got 7 teaspoons of sugar left in it, some of you must be making some shit tasting beer then.
fergi


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## hoppy2B (28/4/12)

thefawnroux said:


> :beer: mmm, coke beer...



Fergi will drink that.  

Give him a six pack. :lol:


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## bum (28/4/12)

fergi said:


> what bloody beer are you drinking that has still got 7 teaspoons of sugar left in it, some of you must be making some shit tasting beer then.


And yet you still had to ask the question.

You, as an experienced brewer, should have been able to work out that 99.999999999999999999% of beers ever made don't have that much fermentables pre-ferment, let alone afterwards.

Then you slag blokes for answering your stupid question.


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## Tony (28/4/12)

pyrosx said:


> Only if you squint and hold your nose



PMSL !!!




thefawnroux said:


> Well, i think coke has about 10.6g sugar per 100ml (or around 1.042 if you prefer :icon_cheers



The starch plant also made the caramel color that use in Coke...... I dont drink coke!

Think sugar and water mixed in a big SS pressure cooker, heated to about 200+ deg with steam and then injected with hydrochloric acid and ammonia.

If the reactor blew a seal during a cook, it realeased a white gas that would kill you in one breath and would cause a full scale evacuation of the plant..... and it happened now and then. Was like white fog and if you saw it you RAN!

It had a pH of about 2 and ate holes in your clothes.

Yum Yum 

Who wants a coke?


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## Bubba Q (28/4/12)

Buuba Q: Did you, or did you not claim that beer contains 30% sugar?
Golf Guy: Well, I did, but ...
Bubba Q: Now I'm not a fancy big city lawyer, [congregation gasps] but it seems to me that in order to create alcohol, yeast must convert sugar into CO2 and ethyl alcohol. Isn't that so?
Golf Guy: Well, yes ...
Bubba Q: And...
GolfGuy: And I suppose if there was 30% sugar still unconverted into alcohol in each and every beer then every single bottle and can would be weapon of mass destruction.


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## fawnroux (29/4/12)

Tony said:


> PMSL !!!
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Well Tony, I didn't want a coke, but gosh darn, I'd be lying if I said my mouth wasn't watering at the thought now! :icon_drool2: 

Tip this pale ale out I think.


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## MHB (29/4/12)

View attachment 54150

Complements Braukaiser
Mark


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## freezkat (29/4/12)

hoppy2B said:


> Fergi will drink that.
> 
> Give him a six pack. :lol:


yeast tries to eat all the sugar

but it can't. Longer mash times help to remove non-fermetable sugars

Maltose is a complex carbohydrate. If you want to "skinny" your beer down...add an enzyme like amylase (Beano tablets 2 per 20L). You will get a FG around .999 everytime. You will have a very thin beer that takes months to ferment. You may need to switch to a wine yeast to get all of the sugar out. Like Lv-1116 or LV-1118


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## thylacine (29/4/12)

fergi said:


> i know it sounds like an easy answer, but one of the guys at golf made a statement that beer is 30 percent sugar,
> i have a 6 pack on this and my answer was it doesnt have any sugar added its only the sugar from barley that it contains, and its not 30 percent.then he went on to say that sucrose/dextrose are sugars, yes they are but they are not added , not including KK or specialty beers.
> 
> his original statement was it is made up of 30 percent sugar, this was in relation to the fact i said i didnt want to drink coke because of the added sugar.
> ...



Not ALL beers. eg.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinheitsgebot
"...the only ingredients that could be used in the production of beer were water, barley and hops..." ; "...German breweries are very proud of the Reinheitsgebot, and many (even brewers of wheat beer[3]) claim to still abide by it..."


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## MHB (29/4/12)

All beer has some sugar in it even after fermentation.
There are something like 2.6 million known sugars, of which Sucrose is one, when we mash one of the main aims is to make sugars for the yeast to convert into alcohol. In the process quite a range of sugars are produced, mainly Maltose (a disaccharide is not a complex carbohydrate) but some simple sugars like Glucose and Fructose, some disaccharides like Sucrose also result. So at the start of fermentation there will be a whole bunch of sugars there (yes even in an all malt beer) whether we are talking about added Sucrose or not.
Kunze puts a typical Reinheitsgebot wort at Maltose 65%, Maltotriose 17.5%, Sucrose 5%, Glucose and Fructose 12% (Fructose being 0.8-2.8%)

No yeast (even wine yeast) will eat ALL of the sugars, at some point the energy required to find sugars (nutrient) exceeds the amount of energy available from the sugar and the yeast gives up, this is basically the attenuation limit for a given yeast and varies from one strain to another with something like Champagne at the upper limit and bread yeasts at the lower limit.

It doesnt matter if you mash forever or add exogenous enzymes, there will always be some unfermented sugar remaining after fermentation, but nowhere near 30%. Dry Enzymes dont modify Maltose (that is already fully fermentable) but reduce Dextrins in the wort to simpler sugars that yeast can metabolise.

And please remember that the idea that Beano Tablets would be a useful brewing additive was a joke by Ashton Lewis in BYO (IIRC) and he has since apologised for it.
Mark


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## np1962 (29/4/12)

fergi said:


> yep he is saying its got the same amount of sugar left in it as coke.
> i doubt i get to pick the 6 pack, he is a farmer, they are pretty tight with their coin, but they are always right, never wrong.
> 
> 
> fergi


And here is your problem.
No matter if we all know the answer and it says you are right and he is wrong how are you going to prove it?
Bloody cocky won't believe you anyway.
Was the bloke called Andy and lives at Tarlee? If it was tell him his brother said hello. :icon_cheers: 
Didn't know he'd gone back to playing at Hamley.


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## Bribie G (29/4/12)

Used to love reading the Beano when I was a kid in the UK. In fact a lot of the characters who post on this forum stepped right out of its pages I sometimes think


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## homebrewkid (29/4/12)

get your mate 

get a can of coke

get a beer

get your hydrometer

measure coke

measure beer

tell mate to suck eggs and hand over the 6 pack

simple


cheers:HBK


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## freezkat (30/4/12)

MHB said:


> No yeast (even wine yeast) will eat ALL of the sugars, at some point the energy required to find sugars
> 
> And please remember that the idea that Beano Tablets would be a useful brewing additive was a joke by Ashton Lewis in BYO (IIRC) and he has since apologized for it.
> Mark



Frank Zappa based a musical career on _The Complete Works of Edgard Varse, Volume One...
_Varse years later admitted he meant that book to be a joke..

I have had a high SG beer get stuck on me. Beano and LV-1118 finished it. Almost 3 month ferment. After a couple months of bottle conditioning it had a nice head and light mouth but not watery.

Have you tried Beano? Don't rule it out. Amylase is a natural enzyme. One of the problems with malt extract is its higher final gravity due to unfermentables...hmmm, a little beano and a few more weeks voila! very efficient. Wanna see a pour?

I don't know if this thread was from a diabetics point of view. If it is, I would stick with commercial brew that has a predictable amount of carbohydrates to adjust insulin levels to.

Home brew runs the gamut in leftover sugars. I just offered a way to reduce sugars in beer. We aren't talking style, mouthfeel, body...we're talking sugar.


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