Drying With Dextrose

[peted27]

I'm a little bit confused about people adding dextrose to "dry" out their beers.


Surely, by my logic, adding dextrose will increase alc and leave the malt body as it is?

To dry out i would think you would need to substitute some of the malt for dextrose?

This is something that is written quite a lot on the forum, so i just want to clear it up


Have i missed something??

 

[Nick JD]

Alcohol has a SG of 0.780, so if you add 1% more alcohol using dextrose then you will lower the gravity.

 

[manticle]

You are correct.

However beer is about perception and balance so obviously the balance would change were dex to be added to an all malt beer and a beer with 500g dex and 1kg malt would be different were you to make up to the same ABV with all malt.

If you really want to help shift attenuation and add dryness, you need, as suggested to replace some of the total semi-fermentable sugar with a completely fermentable one.

At least that's my current understanding.

 

[MHB]

Might be a bit clearer this way, when you are designing a beer you usually have an OG in mind.
Lets say you are making 25 L of wort with a target OG of 1.050.
If you used DME (dry malt extract) you would need about 3.5 Kg (well 3.479)
If the same wort was made entirely of dextrose you would need 3.629 Kg
Or for a wort made from and you would need 1.776 Kg of each.
The first wort is made of DME that is only ~75% fermentable, 25 % stays in solution so it cant finish lighter than ~1.0125, so reasonably full bodied.
The second wort is 100% fermentable so could finish under 1.000 (what Nick said about ethanol being lighter than water)
The blended wort could finish as low as 1.00625, the type of yeast and how attenuateive it is will play a big role in how the beer tastes and I have used real rather than apparent attenuation so your hydrometer will give slightly lower numbers.
Point being that when a wort with the same OG has more fermentable ingredients it will finish at a lower gravity, have less body and in fact taste Dryer.
Hope that helps
MHB

 

[Nick JD]

Might be a bit clearer this way, when you are designing a beer you usually have an OG in mind.
Let's say you are making 25 L of wort with a target OG of 1.050.
If you used DME (dry malt extract) you would need about 3.5 Kg (well 3.479)
If the same wort was made entirely of dextrose you would need 3.629 Kg
Or for a wort made from and you would need 1.776 Kg of each.
The first wort is made of DME that is only ~75% fermentable, 25 % stays in solution so it can't finish lighter than ~1.0125, so reasonably full bodied.
The second wort is 100% fermentable so could finish under 1.000 (what Nick said about ethanol being lighter than water)
The blended wort could finish as low as 1.00625, the type of yeast and how attenuateive it is will play a big role in how the beer tastes and I have used real rather than apparent attenuation so your hydrometer will give slightly lower numbers.
Point being that when a wort with the same OG has more fermentable ingredients it will finish at a lower gravity, have less body and in fact taste "Dryer".
Hope that helps
MHB

Great post.

 

[peted27]

Point being that when a wort with the same OG has more fermentable ingredients it will finish at a lower gravity, have less body and in fact taste Dryer.
Hope that helps
MHB

i get that, but by adding (not substituting) dextrose, you're not removing any of the unfermentables, just adding more fermentables in to the beer..... the fact that ethanol has a lower SG than water makes sense though, im assuming this has the effect of lowering the overall final gravity


thans for the replies

 

[beerbrewer76543]

Dextrose can help "dry out" a beer if you subsitute out some of the DME/LME/Grains and use dextrose in its place

:beer:

edit: When people say to add dex to help dry it out they would almost certainly mean to subsitute out some of the DME/LME/Grains and use dextrose in its place