Adding sugar to your beer is NOT going to make it taste like freakin' cider.

Williams 728
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dontman said:
Holy Schnikes! That's a big brown beer! Prolly the biggest ever. Oh wait, is that for a 10Gal batch? I notice a lot of Chocolate malt in this beer. What's the SRM turn out to be? I'll bet its got preternatural head retention though.

I'm brewing a English brown next weekend so I'm exploring my options.
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here's the rest of the digs:

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 11.00 gal
Boil Size: 12.86 gal
Estimated OG: 1.047 SG
Estimated Color: 21.5 SRM
Estimated IBU: 24.3 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.00 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Mash Schedule: Temperature Mash, 2 Step, Medium Body
Total Grain Weight: 16.25 lb
----------------------------
Temperature Mash, 2 Step, Medium Body
Step Time Name Description Step Temp
30 min Protein Rest Add 20.31 qt of water at 129.3 F 122.0 F
45 min Saccharification Heat to 154.0 F over 15 min 154.0 F
10 min Mash Out Heat to 168.0 F over 10 min 168.0 F

OG was 1.051
FG was 1.012

I'll PM you with the whole recipe including my notes
 
Seabee John said:
Outside of a recipe that looks for a certain result albeit flavor, color, or the obligatory bump in ABV, why would you use sugar when you can get the same results with the proper blend of malt?
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I think sugar is cheaper. Sometimes you might want to dry out a beer, and all the other stuff mentioned in this thread. But most commonly, when it gets recommended in large amounts, it's by people for whom cost is a slightly higher priority than absolute quality. Which is fair enough if that's what you're after, though I'd guess most on here would stick to 10% or less.
 
Seabee John said:
Outside of a recipe that looks for a certain result albeit flavor, color, or the obligatory bump in ABV, why would you use sugar when you can get the same results with the proper blend of malt?
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(thanks for the recipe info)

As far as this question, I hope that cost does not play a real factor in most people's decision to use sugar.

If you look at it from a craftsman's point of view sugar and every adjunct is a tool to achieve a purpose. The purpose of sugar most often is to boost ABV. There is nothing wrong with this as a motivator. You can only go so big with malt before you start going too heavy. In my experience the biggest mistake amateur brewers make is to go too malty and even (gasp) too hoppy.

When I build recipes I keep a close eye on the FG. This is the prime determining factor in whether people will go back for a second or third beer I believe. If I see my FG creeping up above 1.017 I am going to start thinking about adding a drying adjunct like sugar or honey.

It will lower the perceived heaviness of the malt and clean up the palate. I've got a 9.6% Belgian Strong in primary right now that needed a lot of sugar (2 pounds honey, 1 pound belgian light) just to balance the 17 pounds of malt in it.

Of course with all of that said I am a fan of simply crafting the recipe for balance and deliciousness and letting the ABV fall where it may.
 
I bottled my first two mini batches some weeks ago, so i guess i will find out about this 'cidery flavour' myth.
 
I just made a batch using some leftover malt extract i had laying around. The total recipe was:

3.3lb gold Liquid extract
approximately 2lb or corn sugar
1oz cluster hops
coopers dry ale yeast

I just wanted to make a cheap beer with some stuff I had laying around. I will let you know if i get a "cidery" taste in this batch. Cheers.
 
I just put it in the keg about two hours ago. I sampled a small portion right away, and I am going to have to say it is terrible. Final verdict will have to come in a day or two, but right now it is absolutely "cidery". Will see how it taste ice cold and carbed though. Kind of sucks because I brewed it for a big concert this weekend and now I don't want to bring it.
 
wowzers said:
and I am going to have to say it is terrible.
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ouch. i've had some brews that i've just kind of thrown together with leftover stuff, not having a concept of how they'd turn out, and they seem to be similar in flavor to that stuff. maybe with some time though . . .
 
FWIW, I just finished drinking a two gallon batch of modified kit stout, brewed with about 25 percent adjunct sugars. It was brewed back on Oct. 3. Six weeks out, it was still distinctly sweet. By the time I got around to the last of it (a week ago) the taste was very dry with almost too little sweetness. And the yeast used is considered to be of low attenuation.
 
while i agree that you can make perfectly good beer with cane/corn sugar, i do know after much reading (articles from ale street news, and the book "the beer diet") that all malt beers are healthier for you.

they say an all malt dark ale after dinner is excellent for your digestive system, and loaded with antioxidants and polyphenols.....
of course, this is just based on things i read, i'm not stating it as fact, just sharing what i have read.
 
I heard somebody say this at the LHBS tonight. I simply said "that's a myth" and they said oohhh nooo. I just said oh alright whatever you guys say. Zainasheff would not recommend it in his recipes if it did. I added cane sugar to dry out my belgian golden strong which is still in primary. But, I do not believe it makes it taste like cider.
 
Of course not. It's a Belgian strong...it needs to be lightened with something. You used a small amount...you didn't use it for 40% of the grist, or it would taste like ass.
 
I just did a bitter where I replaced 1lb of malt in a ten gallon batch with 1lb of dark brown sugar. I have just tasted it after two weeks in the fermenter (I taste all the way through the process) This beer is going to turn out just fine. I think i will be keeping the sugar, but putting that pound of malt back in, also.......Unless of course it develops differently before I next brew.
 
One lb in a ten gallon batch will barely be noticeable in a bitter. You might get a hint of molasses after a year and hops mellow out. I used 2lb of dark brown sugar in a big porter, and I think it added a lot of character.
 
A year!!? No way am I keeping a bitter that long! It's meant to be drunk young, and I'm so impatient I get demonstrations outside my house from the stem cell people! :D
 
Laughing_Gnome_Invisible said:
I just did a bitter where I replaced 1lb of malt in a ten gallon batch with 1lb of dark brown sugar. I have just tasted it after two weeks in the fermenter (I taste all the way through the process) This beer is going to turn out just fine. I think i will be keeping the sugar, but putting that pound of malt back in, also.......Unless of course it develops differently before I next brew.
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I just did a southern english brown (5 gallon batch) and subbed out some malt for a half pound of dark brown sugar and thought the same thing, next time keep the malt. It came out good, but it did dry it out a bit more than I had anticipated. Also didn't add as much molasses flavor as I wanted, maybe next time, keep the malt and use 1lb.
 
sugar doesnt cause cider flavors that a myth that was started before we had such great yeasts and variety available.

Cidery flavors can come from unhealthy yeast or unfinished ferments (I believe acetyldehyde can be a step in the conversion of sugar to ethanol). Using large amounts of sugar can be detrimental to the yeast if you don't make up for the missing nutrients, but at 20% this hasn't been necessary for me.
 
i usually use some sort of non-malt sugars in my beers. more of the time its candi sugar, honey or molasses. i've never used table sugar but my first batch was a kit, only one can of lme and 5 lbs of corn sugar. one taste of that and i knew i could do better. that was the only batch that ever tasted like cider. i agree with most on here. sugars have thier place in beer. just not in excess.
 
I used 10% sugar in a Tripel I brewed a month ago. ~10% abv after it was all said and done, 1.01 FG, and it tasted great going into the secondary. Wish I didn't have to wait several months before kegging it and tasting it again, but it gives me something to look forward to.
 
PseudoChef said:
The point of not adding all the fermentables at first is because it will overwhelm the yeast due to viscosity of the wort and because the yeast will choose to metabolise the simple sugars (glucose, sucrose, fructose) in preference over the maltose. These latter sugars (which come from the malts) will be left unfermented, resulting in cloying sweetness and a heavy body.
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If you added the sugar in during the boil, would it make sense to pitch some fresh yeast after a week?
 
In my experiences, I have found that using more than 30% of table sugar in a batch will indeed produce "sherry-like" flavors. I can only attribute the cidery taste people speak of to the beer itself being sharp from youth. In the right styles of beer, this sherry presence is very welcome i.e. barley-wine.

I have intentionally brew my amber barley-wine with table sugar comprising 50% of the fermentables, in my attempts at creating a beer similar to red Italian table wine. It works very well, it is sweet and dry, but like wine this beer does need to mature for a year before it comes into its own after put on oak.
 
Here is my reasoning, I might be wrong, might be right :

If you brew a pale ale or lager at 3.8% alc and want to have it at 5%, it seems like adding sugar to up the alc content +1.2% would produce more nasties that could be tasted in the brew (by-products of fermentation) than if going with :

Option 2: adding a bit of 92-96% alc. to up the level to 5%, really won't take much and that alcohol is much purer than the 1.2% you'll get from fermenting sugar in your beer, would it be candi, invert or dextrose whatever… So, it should be cleaner in taste and very hard to detect : ferment a sugar wash to 1.2% clarify it and carbon filter it even, I doubt it would taste cleaner than water + 95% alc to make the alc content 1.2% It just makes total sense to me.

Unless that when adding sugar in a wort, when it ferments the things blend together and somewhat the sugar starts giving some good flavours like the malt/ and is totally different from adding some sugar wash to a beer. I highly doubt it.

and yes I know I could just add more malt, but I'm talking about adding 1.2% here, not much…
 
day_trippr said:
Just one: Newbies are soooo cute!

Cheers! :D
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Ruuude.

Belair, I don't know of anyone trying it but I strongly suspect that dumping a bunch of Everclear in your beer will not do good things for its flavor. Bumping up ABV from 1.2 to 5 means that 24% of your alcohol would be from the booze addition, so that's actually pretty significant. A better bet if you want to bump up gravity (due to unexpectedly low mash efficiency I assume) would be to add some dry malt extract to make up the difference. Sugar is also fine, but only if you specifically want to dry out the beer.
 
I see this is an older thread.. Anyways.. I brewed a batch of 2.5 gallon batch of what's considered liberty cream ale ag kit on Midwest. The starting gravity for the beer is low. 1.044. I think. Can't remember. Any ways. I added 3 ounces of corn sugar at flame out and I didn't get any off flavor. And tasted identical to the kit version I bought from Midwest. I know 3 ounces isn't really allot tho.
 
I found this post interesting as I am finishing off a keg of fantastic IPA that I brewed with only Citra IPA. Im still newish, so I stuck to the "kit" recipe that the local store put together for me. It called for 1 lb of corn sugar. I thought this was strange. Poured it anyway, 15 mins left in boil. Primary for a week, at an average of 71-73, and secondary in fridge in carboy for another week. This beer is amazing. Very dry and tasty. And, with only one packet of Safale US-05 (rehydrated before pitching), it reached FG of 1.012 from an OG of 1.085. Strong stuff, wife loves it, and friends are emptying my keg. :rockin:
 
You have to remember that people that sell Beer supplies are out to sell you stuff like Malt extracts, hops, bottling sugar, air locks, finnings, hydrometers, racking canes, etc.

Just like the dumb-asses in the wine industries, they want to confer a certain purist, bitchy, persnickitiness, so that you'll gladly buy their over priced crap.

You can make a perfectly palatable beer using just sugar and some other cheap (off the grocery store shelf) stuff like, flour, cocoa, coffee, tea, molasses, sorghum etc.

You will need to get some good yeast and some decent hops to your liking.

I make a 5 gallon batch of great beer for less than 3 bucks. But then again, I am no snob, I just like getting drunk as cheap as possible.
I like a light beer that I can drink a lot of without getting too hammered or consuming too many calories.

A guy that knows what he is doing can get every thing he needs except hops and yeast between Home Depot and the super market. But then the brewer supplies companies don't get their cut.
 
TheSitRep said:
You have to remember that people that sell Beer supplies are out to sell you stuff like Malt extracts, hops, bottling sugar, air locks, finnings, hydrometers, racking canes, etc.

Just like the dumb-asses in the wine industries, they want to confer a certain purist, bitchy, persnickitiness, so that you'll gladly buy their over priced crap.

You can make a perfectly palatable beer using just sugar and some other cheap (off the grocery store shelf) stuff like, flour, cocoa, coffee, tea, molasses, sorghum etc.

You will need to get some good yeast and some decent hops to your liking.

I make a 5 gallon batch of great beer for less than 3 bucks. But then again, I am no snob, I just like getting drunk as cheap as possible.
I like a light beer that I can drink a lot of without getting too hammered or consuming too many calories.

A guy that knows what he is doing can get every thing he needs except hops and yeast between Home Depot and the super market. But then the brewer supplies companies don't get their cut.
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If you're not paying for malted barley from those greedy brewing supply companies, you're kinda actually not making beer. Maybe you'd be better off over at prisonhoochtalk.com. ;)
 
TheSitRep said:
I make a 5 gallon batch of great beer for less than 3 bucks. But then again, I am no snob, I just like getting drunk as cheap as possible.
I like a light beer that I can drink a lot of without getting too hammered or consuming too many calories.
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I too originally came to homebrewtalk looking to making the cheapest lightest beer to get wicked smashed on and I haven't found any good recipe for less than $5 yet.
 
wingedcoyote said:
If you're not paying for malted barley from those greedy brewing supply companies, you're kinda actually not making beer. Maybe you'd be better off over at prisonhoochtalk.com. ;)
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Maybe he's a big "Zima" fan?

Wait - no, even Zima had traces of malted barley in it...

Cheers! ;)
 
I went a little crazy on stocking up on different kinds of sugar after reading Experimental Brewing... I think I have a pound each of palm, piloncillo, Lyles, jaggery, & turbinado. Not sure if and when I'm gonna use them, but at some point I will! :ban:
 
I know this is an old thread, but I have to add my input. I have brewed about 20 batches of beer, and the only time I have ever experienced a "cidery" beer that I have brewed was when I either used sugar or honey in the beer.

1. A couple years back, I brewed an extract brown ale (5 gallons) and added 1 pound of brown sugar to it, per the receipe, and bottled it. To me, it was almost undrinkable due to the strong cidery taste. Age did not help. I still have a few bottles left and tried one a month or so ago, and it was just as bad as it was when I tried the first bottle.
2. I brewed the White House Honey Porter (All Grain - 5 gallons) about 3 months ago. I added a pound of honey, per the recipe. Really looking forward to this, my first taste of it had that exact same cider taste that I experienced in the brown ale, just a little less strong. I was hoping it would go away eventually, but its been sitting in the keg for over 2 months and has not gotten better, and based on experience will not get better.

I'm far enough into my brewing experience that I have tight control over my process including good yeast practices (and being sure fermentation is complete), controlled fermentation temperatures in a fermentation chamber, etc. I even dial in with water profiles and mash pH, which some people say is overkill. I can say for certain that the "off flavor" of both beers was exactly the same, and that I did not experience it in anything else I have brewed. Therefore, the only thing I can attribute it to was the fact that I used simple sugars in both recipes. And according to what people say about how much you can use, I was below the threshold. So at least in my experience, sugar can lead to a cidery taste, and can do so even at levels that are thought to be acceptable. Perhaps my palate is more sensitive towards tasting it, but I will say my wife can taste it as well.

EDIT: I just noticed that both recipes happened to use Nottingham yeast. Perhaps it could be something to do with that yeast strain when using simple sugars. Based on my experience, I know there must be others out there who have had a similar experience. Would be interesting to know what yeast was used.
 
I used to get that too years ago when I made extract beers and tried to skimp on the malt by adding sugar. Yuck, it was drinkable, barely, but tasted "cidery" just like Charles Papazian said it would. I even convinced myself that I had to use corn sugar or malt extract for priming because using table sugar to prime the bottles was enough to make it cidery. (and maybe it was if the beer was marginal to begin with) I convinced my self I could taste the acetaldehyde in an all-malt beer just from priming with table sugar.

After a 20 year break from brewing, I'm doing all-grain now. I am priming with table sugar, and it's so much easier to use than corn sugar or DME. And sometimes I add sugar to the kettle to boost the alcohol without adding body -- but there's plenty of malt in there already, and adding more malt would make it too heavy and sweet.

If you're adding sugar because you're too cheap to buy malt, your running a risk. Maybe it'll work for you, maybe it won't. If you're adding sugar in addition to plenty of malt (extract or grain, doesn't matter) and it's appropriate for the style, you should be good to go.

[I just thought of this] I wonder if if that taste is from the yeast having to invert the sucrose while the yeast is stressed already? Lack of nutrients, bad temperature range, way underpitched, etc. And if the yeast was happy and healthy the same recipe would be just fine? Might be worth an experiment; make a sugar beer and add yeast nutrient to half of it.
 
z-bob said:
If you're adding sugar because you're too cheap to buy malt, your running a risk. Maybe it'll work for you, maybe it won't. If you're adding sugar in addition to plenty of malt (extract or grain, doesn't matter) and it's appropriate for the style, you should be good to go.

[I just thought of this] I wonder if if that taste is from the yeast having to invert the sucrose while the yeast is stressed already? Lack of nutrients, bad temperature range, way underpitched, etc. And if the yeast was happy and healthy the same recipe would be just fine? Might be worth an experiment; make a sugar beer and add yeast nutrient to half of it.
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In my case I was adding sugar just b/c the recipe called for it. In both cases I was adding it in addition to plenty of malt. A pound of sugar in each beer (well, honey in one) for around a 1.065 OG (1.063 on the other) According to MrMalty calculator, both call for 1.1 packs of dry yeast. So perhaps I was slightly underpitched on both, but i wouldnt say way underpitched. I dont recall whether i used yeast nutrient, as i do that off and on, but for sure the fermentation temperature was within the spec range for the duration, as i tightly control that with my STC-1000 controlled chamber. I suppose you may be onto something with the yeast health, but it doesnt seem like what I did was so extreme to cause that strong of a cidery flavor.
 
IMHE, if you can actively control ferm temps and ferment on the low side, you shouldn't see any and you can go with pretty high percentages of sugar. I'm not even sure if it's yeast stress. I think yeast just churn through these simple sugars fast and fart out the cider. Controlling temps keeps them in check.
 
Weezy said:
IMHE, if you can actively control ferm temps and ferment on the low side, you shouldn't see any and you can go with pretty high percentages of sugar. I'm not even sure if it's yeast stress. I think yeast just churn through these simple sugars fast and fart out the cider. Controlling temps keeps them in check.
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I wonder if fermentation temps could be the cause. I had precise control of the temp, but I fermented on the higher side of the recommended range. Recommended on this strain is 57 to 70. I went with 67 on the Honey Porter from start to finish (Pitched at 67, fermented down to FG at 67) On the brown ale, I didnt record the temp, but I'm sure it was in the 60's.
 

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