Belgian Blond Biab Help

[6tri6ple6]

Im brewing a belgian blond tomorrow using the biab method.The recipe im using has around 15% cane sugar which i want to add during fermentation not in the boil. I put all the numbers in the biab spreadsheet and it told me how much grain based on my efficency which i then took out the sugar percentage from that figure. What im trying to get my head around is how do i now calculate efficency and considering i have less grain.
Apologies for sounding a little noobish. im sure its simple to work out, i just cant seem to get my head around it.

Any help would be appreciated

Cheers
Richard

 

[Nick JD]

If it's just 15%, I'd put it in the boil.

 

[manticle]

Im brewing a belgian blond tomorrow using the biab method.The recipe im using has around 15% cane sugar which i want to add during fermentation not in the boil. I put all the numbers in the biab spreadsheet and it told me how much grain based on my efficency which i then took out the sugar percentage from that figure. What im trying to get my head around is how do i now calculate efficency and considering i have less grain.
Apologies for sounding a little noobish. im sure its simple to work out, i just cant seem to get my head around it.

Any help would be appreciated

Cheers
Richard

Put in the numbers without the sugar. That's your OG/efficiency whatever.

Then do the same recipe with the sugar. That's how you calculate OG:FG and work out alc %.

 

[6tri6ple6]

thanx for that. i think i was really making it harder than it actually was.

Another question if i may...
When scaling my blond recipe for BIAB would i need to increase the amount of cane sugar as well since it doesnt need to be mashed? Or keep it as the recipe states. The recipe im doing is the Lefty Blond recipe from BCS.

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

thanx for that. i think i was really making it harder than it actually was.

Another question if i may...
When scaling my blond recipe for BIAB would i need to increase the amount of cane sugar as well since it doesnt need to be mashed? Or keep it as the recipe states. The recipe im doing is the Lefty Blond recipe from BCS.

Mashing refers to you soaking the grains. I think you might have meant "sparging" which is washing the grains after you've drained the liquor.

Your grain volume should have been slightly increased to allow for a no-sparge - that is how most BIAB (but not me - I do sparge).

Don't increase the cane sugar. My first BIAB was a Belgian Blonde and I put sugar in it to make up for poor efficiency - it didn't make the beer any better.

What you'd be better off doing (and I know this now in hindsight) is to boil the liquor as normal. After you've boiled it (and it's cooled a slight bit - don't want to break the hydrometer), test the gravity and adjust it for the temp it's at (you'll be able to google a calculator or use brewmate's tool).

If you're happy with the gravity, then progress to the next stage. If you're not, put it back on the heat and boil a little more to reduce the water content and increase the gravity. It won't be the most efficient brew (1st brews and no sparge brews rarely are), and you might lose a little volume, but you will end up with good usable wort at the end, rather than weak flavoured wort.

Test again. Worst case is that you boil it a little too much, and you need to put a little extra water in to adjust it back down to the gravity you want (google - wort diluation calculator, or it's in the tools menu in brewmate).

Goomba

 

[Bribie G]

Whenever using sugar in UK recipes, Aussie lagers etc I always add to the fermenter. The only reason - as far as I'm aware - that sugar was added to the kettle was because in Victorian times the kettles were fired by direct heat and some useful caramelisation would happen during the boil. However why throw away good money by discarding spent hops that have been in the boil and are now spent sweet hops, which has robbed a small amount of the sugar from the wort. Not only the hops, but the hot break and other trub you leave behind in the bottom of the kettle will likewise be sweet trub. <_<

The question is whether to adjust or not. Most commercial type recipes seem to assume that the sugar is going into the kettle, so if you are following a recipe off the web or out of a book, intending to add the sugar to the fermenter not the kettle, and going to make an adjustment at all, I'd possibly cut back the sugar by, say, 10 - 15% to avoid skewing the beer slightly (and possibly making it a bit more alcoholic than you intended).

Edit:
added some clarification, I tend to waffle

Double edit:
Get yourself a free copy of BrewMate, it's excellent for playing around with recipes and seeing what happens when you adjust with sugar etc.

 

[Nick JD]

The only reason - as far as I'm aware - that sugar was added to the kettle was because in Victorian times the kettles were fired by direct heat and some useful caramelisation would happen during the boil.

I think if you add sucrose to the start of the boil, the rolie polie and the pH invert it and combine it a bit with the proteins and it gets all delicious.

EDIT: more so probably if you are high gravity boiling. And there's also the never-ending invertase = kit twang argument (which I think is only detectable when stressed yeast are fed 1kg of sucrose and fart out unhappy flavours coz they want maltose instead).

 

[argon]

With my Belgians, I've always added any simple sugaz to the fermenter about 2/3 the way through fermentation. I boil it up in the minimum amount of water i can, then cool and add to the rest of the batch. So i may get some caramelisation... but i doubt it. I do this as I want my yeasties to chow down on the more complex stuff first, then go for the simple sugaz at the end... like dessert. I find i get a better malt presence and ester profile doing this and no hot alcohols or nasty esters by adding up to 20% simple fermentables.

edit: caveat... this is how i've always done it and get good results. As i've never done it the other way, ie kettle addition, i can't say if it is better or worse.

 

[Nick JD]

Adding it to the kettle at flameout has never made much sense to me. Adding it at halfway to FG is a great idea, but I still don't really like adding sucrose at that point. Especially for a 1.090+ beer.

For my Belgian Blonde (3.5kg grain, 0.5kg sugar) I add the sucrose at the start of the boil so it's not sucrose by then end of the boil ... but glucose and fructose.

Question is: do yeast eat sucrose before maltose? I'm not sure they do. If you're adding non-inverted sugaz and there's maltose left - do the yeast eat the sucrose then?

Is sucrose a "simple" sugar? Do the yeast start converting it when there's maltose left?

I have no issues with attenuation with this amount of sugar added to the boil.

 

[manticle]

I add to the fermenter in stages after primary has wound down.

The main reason is nothing to do with attenuation. It's to avoid stressing the yeast as I have experienced hot alcohols in the past adding too much at once and have not had this trouble since using this method.

Usually I'll chuck a small portion in the boil - say 1/4, then the rest in equal amounts over the last stages of the fermentation as described above. For a bill with 800g sugar that'll be 200 to boil and 200 every few days after the monster krausen has settled and the beer has nearly finished attenuating the malt wort.

 

[mje1980]

I added 800g to a tripel after primary was nearly done. Fwaaaaaaaaaaaark, raised the temp, and the krausen exploded!!. Came down to 1.008 though, and was a nice beer.

 

[CosmicBertie]

Is Candy sugar a simple or complex sugar? When would you add this if making a dark Belgian? I was planning on putting mine in the boil, but after reading this, I may add it to the fermenter after a week or so. Its a liquid syrup, does it need boiling, or can I just add it straight out of the tub?

 

[sim]

Question is: do yeast eat sucrose before maltose?

Yes, they will go for the 'simple' sugars first. Some strains will actually loose their ability to ferment maltose effectively when feed a high sucrose diet, in say the starter. You could perhaps take a dry english strain that you like the ester profile of, and turn it into a underattenuating ESB strain.


sim

 

[Nick JD]

Yes, they will go for the 'simple' sugars first.

Can you point me to a place where I can read about which sugars yeast will eat in preference over others? Both Maltose and Sucrose are disaccharides.

 

[sim]

Can you point me to a place where I can read about which sugars yeast will eat in preference over others? Both Maltose and Sucrose are disaccharides.

i cant entirely. They are both disaccharides, but they require different enzymes to hydrolize them: invertase - sucrose, maltase - maltose. With regard to high gravity brewing, I think i was reading about it in the Classic Beer Styles book "Belgian Ale" by Pierre Rajotte.


p68. "Yeast" by Chris White and Jamil Zainasheff.

"The Exponential phase occours with the yeast rapidly consuming sugar, and they do this in a certain order. Yeast utilize the simple sugars first: glucose, then fructose and sucrose. The yeast can shuttle thee simple sugars inside their cell and into metabolism very quickly...

...In response to the presence of maltose, the yeast use maltase enzymes to hydrolyze the maltose into glucose units. The yeast can then utilize the glucose through the normal metabolism cycle."


sim

 

[felten]

Simple sugars is a bit of a misnomer in this case. The yeast will consume the glucose first, and the invertase enzyme breaks down the sucrose outside of the cell, so the sucrose enters the cell as glucose. (and fructose fits in there somewhere too)

At least that's my understanding of it.

 

[Nick JD]

I just looked it up - glucose, fructose and sucrose halt the assimilation of maltose.

So yeah, yeast will eat sucrose over maltose.

I wonder if invertase (or what it ends up as) tastes like kit twang?

And why does starting on abundant simple sugars lead the yeast to give up on maltriose?

 

[sim]

ahh true ...where did you look it up? the microbiology section of my library consists of that "yeast" book <_<

style wise, i came to the conclusion a while back that for Belgian Golden Strong i wanted sugar addition to fermentor late - lower start gravity with high maltose proportion = less esters and fusels etc, and coupled with additions of sucrose/dextrose late = hig % alc, extreme attenuation, dangerous drinkableity.

and for Tripels in the boil was the go - increased ester production not a bad thing, and possibly less attenuated, not so dry.

...havent finished testing the idea though.


sim

 

[Nick JD]

ahh true ...where did you look it up?

Brewing Science and Practice.

I agree with the triple thing. And Dark Strong too.