Brewing Myths Caused By Chinese Whispers

[braufrau]

Darren, your thought processes still seem to be in catch up mode. Boiling sugar slowly with a little water leads to caramelisation - something I pointed out to you in an earlier post. Far from being fools, dr K and I are well aware of the colour benefits of caramelised sugar - be it table sugar or the malt sugars in a good crystal/cara malt. It is the caramelisation that gives you the rich red colours.

And you still haven't explained what part you think acid plays in this process.

Wes

Yep. Inversion is what DrK says ... sucrose split into 2. No colour change. And caramalisation is oxidation of the sugar.
Inversion (10% or whatever %) happens at quite low temperatures. (with an acid catalyst) but caramalisation of sucrose happens at 160C. Fructose caramalises at
110C. What I "invert" my sugar I heat it to ~120C and I see very little caramalization, that may be more evidence that its not very inverted.

BTW DrK - glucose and fructose have the same chemical formula but different structures and are therefore metabolised differently. For instance, in humans,
glucose has a GI of 100 on the glucose scale (obviously) and fructose a GI of 24 which indicates their very different metabolic pathways .

I'm now badgering HWMBO to stick some of my "inverted" sugar in a polarimeter. It'd be funny if the result was the same as sugar ... 0% inversion.

There was a good basic brewing thingy where they used 6 different sugars in otherwise the same wort/yeast/fermentation and they went into raptures over dark belgian syrup. Anyway it was Dec 28th 2006.

Oho ... that remninds me ... basic brewing generate their own myths! "People who claim to be allergic to bees have actually been stung by wasps."
I was so offended by that comment I had to stop listening to that particular episode.

 

[InCider]

Food grade hose.

I bought racking hose from Bunnings. $3 for 5 meters. It's not food grade, but is PVC, is clear and smells the same as the bought stuff from the HBS.

What could possibly leach out at 10-15 degrees and lower when kegging?

InCider.

 

[Trough Lolly]

Food grade hose.

I bought racking hose from Bunnings. $3 for 5 meters. It's not food grade, but is PVC, is clear and smells the same as the bought stuff from the HBS.

What could possibly leach out at 10-15 degrees and lower when kegging?

InCider.

....or filtering beer for that matter! B)

Cheers,
TL