# Is all grain brewed beer 99% sugar free?



## Beak (9/11/15)

Just seen this campaign many of the commercial brewery's are pushing as advertiseing on Facebook.
Question is! Is our all grain brews sugar free? They say yeast eats up all the sugar. To be honest I havnt looked fully at there website promoting sugar free. But thought its a little strange. Because we extract the sugars from the grain to make beer. Has the sugar gone to my brain or have I had to many beers. Please help


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## SBOB (9/11/15)

I dont know anyone drinking beer for its diet benefits


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## Beak (9/11/15)

I really just want an excuse I can give the missus


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## troopa (9/11/15)

Sugar is a broad term. (Still a tonne of carbs in beer)
I suspect that they are honing in on sucrose though for the advertising promotion though.. Which most of it should of been converted/inverted before and after they ferment it I assume.. Happy to be made an arse of though


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## Droopy Brew (9/11/15)

MAybe no added sugar? I guess a Saison that has fermented down to 1.000 is sugar free.

Marketing bullshit mes think but shit, if it gets it past the ball and chain roll with it dude!


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## DU99 (9/11/15)

what does yeast do to the wort.convert the sugars into alcohol


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## Beak (9/11/15)

Here is the website!
http://www.beerthebeautifultruth.com/


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## SBOB (9/11/15)

They also probably aren't including any Belgian Tripel's in that 99.9% sugar free


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## Beak (9/11/15)

James squire and associates are advertiseing this website.


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## Danscraftbeer (9/11/15)

gotta laugh. I cant get into the can of worms of the details of sugars, malts, ,,,,,,,sugars etc etc. :lol:

are they pulling the no adjunct sugars card?


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## DU99 (9/11/15)

The prize ain't nothing to be sneezed at


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## Black Devil Dog (9/11/15)

I wonder why they're doing it. Maybe some research company has told them that people think their beer has a heap of cane sugar in it.

You'd think that if their target market was actually concerned about that, they'd promote it as 100% 99.9 % pure malt or whatever they think people want to hear. 

This sort of stuff makes me want to not buy their product, so good luck with it.



Edit. accidentally added 0.1%.


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## Rodolphe01 (9/11/15)

I'm guessing it has nothing to do with added sugar (i.e. cane sugar). I reckon it is more to do with 'residual' sugar (and probably more accurately carbohydrates generally rather than sugar as we know it). Thereby highlighting the point that 'low carb' beers aren't that much lower in energy than regular mega swill. Most energy in beer comes from the alcohol itself though, the whole carb thing in beer is pretty much BS except for a few examples.

I wouldn't expect any 'sugar' in beer post fermentation - a mixture of other carbohydrates that yield energy for sure - this is where the body comes from in our beers.


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## Rocker1986 (9/11/15)

On the surface it sounds like a load of bullshit. There must be more than 0.1% sugar in a beer if it has any sort of body to it. On my hydrometer it has a scale on it next to the SG "Approx. grammes of sugar per litre" which I can only assume is governed by the SG itself. At 1004/5 it's 15g/L, at 1010 it's 30g/L, at 1015ish it's 45g/L.

Unless their beers are all around 1000 SG then there's no way they are 99.9% sugar free, in my view anyway. More marketing rubbish. It doesn't have to be fermentable to be a sugar, does it? I keep seeing the term "unfermentable sugars", is it inaccurate?


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## Rodolphe01 (9/11/15)

Dammit, I had to click........... skimmed over a bit of it and if you look at the nutritional panels for the beers they show 0.1% 'sugars' and then a higher amount for 'carbohydrates'. I'm not sure in labeling terms exactly what sugars means, maybe it's the 0.1% of cane sugar that doesn't ferment 

Out of interest I looked and a Hahn super dry and it is 99 calories and a LCPA is about 150 calories for 330ml. A reasonable difference I suppose if you're smacking quite a few down............ I'll take the flavour and body though and drink ~30% less if I really need to.

But yes, of course, just marketing shit. Surprisingly they actually state the malts and hops etc used, good info I suppose just to make sure you don't accidentally use them yourself h34r:


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## Black Devil Dog (9/11/15)

Rudi 101 said:


> I'm guessing it has nothing to do with added sugar (i.e. cane sugar). I reckon it is more to do with 'residual' sugar (and probably more accurately carbohydrates generally rather than sugar as we know it). Thereby highlighting the point that 'low carb' beers aren't that much lower in energy than regular mega swill. Most energy in beer comes from the alcohol itself though, the whole carb thing in beer is pretty much BS except for a few examples.
> 
> I wouldn't expect any 'sugar' in beer post fermentation - a mixture of other carbohydrates that yield energy for sure - this is where the body comes from in our beers.


The 1st question in the quiz is how many grams of sugar (cane) in your beer.


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## mstrelan (9/11/15)

Compared to Coca Cola beer must surely be better for your health. There are soft drinks that are 100% sugar-free but that doesn't make them any healthier. I don't really know / care too much about this, but I would much prefer to drink a beverage made from water, malt, yeast and hops than from an unknown number of unknown and unpronounceable ingredients.


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## Rocker1986 (9/11/15)

I'm not sure either but I think sugars is just that when it comes to labelling. It's a bit misleading though when you consider that what they label as carbohydrates are broken down in the digestive system into glucose etc. anyway, which itself is a carbohydrate, so it doesn't really make any difference. Eventually they end up the same.


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## TheWiggman (10/11/15)

Grrrrrrrrrrrr... the title of the web site is a play on words of the popular scare presentation 'Sugar - The Bitter Truth', which in itself is a whole other conversation. Sugar in the '00-10s is what fats were in the '80s and '90s. FRUCTOSE is the evil, deadly, family-killing poison that self-proclaimed health experts and 'informed' TV personalities are fighting against these days. There are some valid reasons for this but fundamentally if you have too much, you will get fat. Much like anything.
If it's stamped on the side of the bottle it has to comply with Food Standards Australia, so I don't think we can question whether that's false. Obviously different beers will have different amounts of unfermented or unfermentable sugars, but in general yes they are low in sugar as governing bodies and scientists define sugar.
What gets my goat is the implication now that because everyone is scared of sugar, anything that is low sugar is good. The corporations react and either advertise that their product is low in sugar (and therefore healthy) or change the product so that it contains less sugar (and therefore healthy). I find it insulting as a consumer. Are we all that naive that we don't actually know what's in our foods and what's good and bad for us, and thus when we get overweight it is naturally due to the evil corporations cramming nasty weight-gaining pollutants into our foods? Well I suppose based on stats we are. Though if you ask me, it's not fructose/fat/grains/GMO that's the problem, it's how much of it we are eating and the amount of physical activity we are doing.

Some of my in-laws are on a sugar free diet at the moment. Literally, they are stating they are on "sugar free". I asked MIL how she goes to make up for the goodness in fruit and she said "no we can eat fruit". I then questioned whether she's aware fruit is very high in sugar, and after disagreeing she baulked (realising she didn't know what she was on about), then FIL says "no it's natural sugar". Of course I rebutted saying that natural or not, it is sugar, and therefore the diet is not sugar free. Suddenly it was processed sugar-free diet. Much like a red-meat vegetarian diet. Moral of the story was that she cut cakes and soft drinks - both of which she used to indulge in - and suddenly due to the miracle of Sarah Wilson's brilliance she was losing weight! She is also walking regularly but that has nothing to do with it.
Another in-law publicly announces they are off sugar and the rhetoric is the same. In reality, she used to eat too much of the wrong things (read: cake, juice, chips, soft drink) and now she isn't. She wasn't managing her diet and now she is. Would you believe, she's losing weight. I skimmed over a page on the book about alcohol and it stated that beer was acceptable as the fructose is mainly broken down by the yeast. It warned against sticky wines because these are super high in sugar - avoid! Telling people not to drink a late season botrytis semillion because it contains sugar is idiotic. It's in a completely different class to soft drink, it's an after dinner sipper and consumed because it tastes beautiful and compliments a dessert. A pleasure in life.

Apart from the marketing bullshit my issue with this is that now as a consumer that doesn't have a weight problem when I want to have something nice I am faced with artificially flavoured crap. What did contain fat moved flavour to sugar. Sugar is now being replaced by artificial sweeteners and the result is watered down, bland, and artificial tasting crap. I haven't had a decent supermarket shelf yoghurt in years. I won't touch diet soft drinks. Big M's clearly taste like low fat milk, so while lacking in flavour they're still high in sugar making them high energy anyway.
I DRINK AND EAT TRASH FOOD BECAUSE I LIKE THE TASTE. I just don't drink or eat a lot of it because it's not good for me. But when I do, I enjoy it. Much like beer.

I think there is no beautiful truth behind beer because while it does have some health benefits it contains alcohol. You can't suddenly wipe the health implications clean because it's low in sugar, some are very low in carbs, and because suddenly everyone who considers themselves 'informed' believes that fructose is the next Hitler. Nothing has changed! AAAARRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!

Where's the rant thread?


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## welly2 (10/11/15)

All of this 99% this or that bollocks is just that. Bollocks. Those sweets you get from "The Natural Confectionary Company" proudly announce their sweets are 99.9% fat free! Whoop-dee-doo. So is ******* Ebola. But it's full to the brim with ******* sugar! (The Natural Confectionary Company sweets, not Ebola).

"Ebola - zero calories and all natural!"


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## Blind Dog (10/11/15)

welly2 said:


> "Ebola - zero calories and all natural!"


But is it Paleo compliant?


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## TimT (10/11/15)

It's just advertising guff. Another one of those ads in the same campaign claims it's preservative free too. Well, depends how you define preservative, but certainly the hops and the alcohol have a strong preservative effect.


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## crowmanz (10/11/15)

TheWiggman said:


> Big M's clearly taste like low fat milk, so while lacking in flavour they're still high in sugar making them high energy anyway.


You don't need to taste it, it is clearly marked on the label that has skim milk in it. I try to avoid skim milk BS, flavoured milks included, because full cream tastes better.



TimT said:


> It's just advertising guff. Another one of those ads in the same campaign claims it's preservative free too. Well, depends how you define preservative, but certainly the hops and the alcohol have a strong preservative effect.


Their claim is that no ingredient is added specifically for the purpose of preservation. Hops are added for bitterness/flavor/aroma AND preservation, alcohol is created by the yeasties to get you drunk first and preservation second. They think they are preservative free because they didn't add any ingredients labeled "preservative xyz".

The old marketing/anti science/ anti vax argument: "if it is natural it can't be bad for you"


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## BrewedCrudeandBitter (10/11/15)

It really comes down to the definition of "sugar." If a beer only has 0.3g of sugar but 10g of carbohydrates then you would have to assume that a lot of that 10g is made up by complex carbohydrates which could technically be called sugars but for the sake of the labelling requirements aren't classifed as "sugar" per se. They'll still give 16kj of energy per gram regardless.


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## GalBrew (10/11/15)

To be fair, when you list the ingredients in a food you list what is in the finished product, NOT what was in the initial production process. So to everyone talking about the amount of cane sugar that goes into a wort, this means less than zero when it comes to ingredients labelling as 99.9% of this sugar is gone. Also as homebrewers you should be able to distinguish between a simple fermentable sugar and a longer chain carbohydrate. Labelling is about semantics, nothing misleading is going on here. Look at the nutritional information panel on any food, there is a line for 'carbohydrates' and a separate line for 'sugars', these words actually mean something in this context. As for the preservative situation, none of the traditional 'chemical' (for want of a better term, although I hate it) preservatives are in beer, we all know this so what's the problem? Yes, hops and alcohol have a preservative effect on a beer, but then so does dark malts. Again these are not classified as a preservative in terms of food labelling. I just don't understand how a nutritional breakdown panel on a beer bottle/can (or any food for that matter) is a bad thing? I would prefer to have the info there than not.


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## whitegoose (10/11/15)

Spot on . What GalBrew said.


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## Black Devil Dog (10/11/15)

welly2 said:


> All of this 99% this or that bollocks is just that. Bollocks. Those sweets you get from "The Natural Confectionary Company" proudly announce their sweets are 99.9% fat free! Whoop-dee-doo. So is ******* Ebola. But it's full to the brim with ******* sugar! (The Natural Confectionary Company sweets, not Ebola).
> 
> "Ebola - zero calories and all natural!"


Coca~bola. :chug:


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## TimT (10/11/15)

Presumably the intent is to distinguish their product from the Johnny-come-latelies - energy drinks, for instance. And craft brewers, to a lesser extent, though if they succeed in persuading people that their beers (they're ads for James Squire, aren't they?) are healthier because they're preservative free/natural, then that persuasion tactic could work for craft breweries, too.


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## TheWiggman (10/11/15)

GalBrew said:


> As for the preservative situation, none of the traditional 'chemical' (for want of a better term, although I hate it) preservatives are in beer, we all know this so what's the problem?


I've spoken to many people through the years and I'd wager the majority of beer drinkers think that mass produced tap beers contain preservatives. Many, many blokes think that VB gives you a big hangover, and it's "most likely because of the preservatives". Even when I've spoken to some people about my hobby (AG) they've said "nice, so you don't add any of the preservatives and other shit that will give you a hangover?". 
You also have companies like Coopers which on the front of the stubbie says 'No additives, no preservatives'. This implies that the other products in the market do. I've noticed a few craft breweries take this angle as well.


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## crowmanz (10/11/15)

TimT said:


> Presumably the intent is to distinguish their product from the Johnny-come-latelies - energy drinks, for instance. And craft brewers, to a lesser extent, though if they succeed in persuading people that their beers (they're ads for James Squire, aren't they?) are healthier because they're preservative free/natural, then that persuasion tactic could work for craft breweries, too.


I remember reading on AusBrewsNews that because beer consumption is down overall they are trying to lure in women and non-beer drinkers, those that dont drink beer because they think it will give them beer bellys or it is full of preservatives etc.


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## Roosterboy (10/11/15)

"Sugar" (used loosely) can be significantly reduced by breaking starches into fermentable sugars by clever mashing and mixing yeast strains.
But not all AG beers are made like this.


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## Johnintassie (20/2/19)

Hello, i posted an item yesterday about a beer that i brewed some months ago. I bought it from a business that was getting out of home brew stuff.I thought it might be worth a go considering it was half price..but still expensive. I am not able to remember the name of it but i think it was Bavarian. It was a golden coloured beer and the unique thing about it was the fact that the instructions said it did not need any added sugar. Also, it required two cans with advice on the label to put a third one in to enjoy the true (i think) Bavarian flavour. The instructions also said only add half the amount of water to it..so i ended up with a brew that was about 22 litres. i did not chuck in a third can because i didn't have one. i thought it would be just another crappy foreign beer but it was sensational...it was a golden coloured slightly slightly misty or foggy...i dunno...wasn't perfectly clear..i have been looking everywhere for it since and have not had any luck. Can you help please?


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