Inverting Sugar In Wort

[dabre4]

Hi all,

I'm going to make a Belgian Golden Strong Ale, and want a OG of around 1.80. My question is in regard to using table sugar instead of candy sugar, mainly because I'm lazy and couldn't be bothered making my own. I know to make candy sugar you need to heat table sugar in an acidic environment to invert the sugars. Can you just poor table sugar into the wort (acidic) and boil it for 60mins to convert the sugars?

I'm thinking to add around 700g of sugar and am wary that this much might add bad flavours or not ferment out properly. This is around 9% of the total grain bill. Too much, not enough, doesnt really matter?

Cheers

 

[Ross]

All good...... just feed to the brew approx half way through ferment, no need to invert the sugar.

Cheers Ross

 

[winkle]

All good...... just feed to the brew approx half way through ferment, no need to invert the sugar.

Cheers Ross

What he said.
The percentage of sugar in a BGS Ale can range between 6 - 18%, the average falls around 12% so you'll be fine.

 

[gone_fishing_]

I would boil it. Serves to sanitise and caramelise (and possibly some inversion)

GF

 

[manticle]

Potential problem with adding it to the boil (and award winning brewers have done so no issue so who knows) is that too much sugar too early can supposedly inhibit yeast digesting maltose.

The very few successful belgian styles I have made have used sugar after primary had wound down and even then in increments.

 

[gone_fishing_]

Potential problem with adding it to the boil (and award winning brewers have done so no issue so who knows) is that too much sugar too early can supposedly inhibit yeast digesting maltose.

The very few successful belgian styles I have made have used sugar after primary had wound down and even then in increments.

I always found that wort around 1.080-1.090 fermented fine. Most likely the OG of drinkable Belgian styles?

gf

 

[manticle]

Haven't had trouble with attenuation but I have had unwelcome hot alc flavours and too much isomyl acetate when adding too much too soon. Might come from stressed yeast.

I'm a fan of incremental late sugar additions but couldn't offer you a graph or pie chart in support. Personal experience only although some brew science supports the idea that overloading early additions is bad. At the end of the day what works for you is what you'll keep doing.

 

[gone_fishing_]

Stressed yeast in a Belgian......never

As with any big beer, supplying healthy growing yeast and quite alot of them is important. I try to brew a 1.045 beer, ferment that and then use ~1/4 of the yeast cake on the bigger beer. I usually pitch 3-5 degrees lower than my desired fermentation temperature. I don't airate the wort.
gf

 

[amiddler]

Stressed yeast in a Belgian......never

As with any big beer, supplying healthy growing yeast and quite alot of them is important. I try to brew a 1.045 beer, ferment that and then use ~1/4 of the yeast cake on the bigger beer. I usually pitch 3-5 degrees lower than my desired fermentation temperature. I don't airate the wort.
gf

<sub><sup>Reading Yeast by Jamil Zainasheff at the moment and he recommends the same, reusing a previous yeast cake, but highly recommends vigorous aeration of the wort before pitching and another shot 12-24 hours into it. How come no aeration from you GF and how are your results? I presume good or you would aerate.

Drew</sup></sub>

 

[ploto]

Haven't had trouble with attenuation but I have had unwelcome hot alc flavours and too much isomyl acetate when adding too much too soon. Might come from stressed yeast.

I'm a fan of incremental late sugar additions but couldn't offer you a graph or pie chart in support. Personal experience only although some brew science supports the idea that overloading early additions is bad. At the end of the day what works for you is what you'll keep doing.

My next brew is also going to be a Belgian ale (of sorts) and I was going to add a total of 750g of sugar; 200g on days 1, 2 & 3 & the remaining 150g on day 4.
Would that be sufficiently incremental? The sugar will be dissolved in hot water and chilled to wort temp before adding.

As for inverting the sugar in boiling water, I would have thought it not hot enough to do anything other than dissolve it?

 

[Bribie G]

The idea of inverting sugar is to break the sucrose molecule into fructose and glucose, in a mild acid medium such as citric acid, so that the yeast does not have to use the invertase enzyme to crack the sucrose. It was thought that when the yeast did that, it could give a certain twang to the beer. Inverting sugar came in at the beginning of the 20th century when enzymes were becoming understood and the inverting thingo was considered some sort of breakthrough at the time - although more likely a blind alley.

The likes of VB and XXXX use heaps of cane sugar syrup and whatever else you can say about the flavour they don't have any sort of "invertase twang" whatever that is supposed to taste like.