The old Corn Syrup / Maltodextrin one again
Corn Syrup is Maltodextrin
Corn Sugar is Dextrose, or properly Dexter Rotated Glucose Mono Hydrate,
Both are made from any starchy grain, in the US they use Corn in Australia we use Wheat to provide the starch; the naming comes about because the Americans cant imagine that anyone would do it any way other than their way.
In any case in a factory like the one Tony from Tamworth works in they take a starchy grain, mill it, separate out the bits that arent starch, digest the starch using a series of chemical and/or enzymic reactions. Starch is just a series of Glucose molecules joined up they un-join them.
If you carry the reactions to completion you end up with Glucose, if you control or arrest the reaction you get higher sugars called Maltins.
This is a chemical analogy of what we do in mashing; we reduce large starch molecules to simpler sugars, the end sugar being primarily Maltose. Maltose is Glucose-Glucose, cut that in half and put a water molecule where they were joined and were back to Dextrose.
This is why home brewers prefer Dextrose to Sugar (Sucrose, Glucose-Fructose). Dextrose produces the same fermentation products as dose Maltose.
As you know if you mash hotter you get more Dextrins in your finished beer. Dextrins being Glucose chains that wont ferment but are soluble, the simplest of these can be trisaccharides or Glucose-Glucose-Glucose.
Maltins are engineered Dextrins that mimic the taste and texture produced during the mashing process. They are called Maltins because they are the same as the body producing products we make when we mash.
Having said that I am not saying that they will taste identical, there are dozens of Maltins and Dextrins, the ratio of the different forms will determine the overall flavour profile.
Used judiciously Maltdextrose can improve the mouth feel of a beer. You can over dose on it, but you would no more use kilos of the stuff in a brew than you would do all youre mashing hot, for the same reasons, the beer would be totally out of balance.
Maltodextrin is a tool in the brewers box of tricks, if you understand what it dose and how to apply it you can make better beer.
MHB