Cooper's Bitter kits with too much acetaldehyde

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subtlephilo

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I've brewed two kits of cooper's bitter in my Mr. Beer kit (i've moved on the a 5gal carboy, but I use the Mr. Beer for small batches), and each time, they came out with way too much acetaldehyde (by the way, never drink too much of that stuff. I can't remember one night when I had a few).

I used half a can in each, and 2lbs of corn sugar. I think that the high ABV killed off the yeast to soon, but is there another reason why the acetladhehyde would be so high?
 
i've heard that adding sugar like sucrose and dextrose in large amounts will produce noticable acetylaldehyde. do you get a massive 'green apple jolly rancher' smell? i added a bunch of table sugar dissolved in warm water to a belgian strong ale a while back and it went wild with acetylaldehyde production after that. i hear the only way to get rid of it is to add some new, actively fermening yeast into the batch and it will clean it up... never tried it though.
 
How many pounds of extract are you using with the 2 pounds of corn sugar? Small amounts of sugar to boost ABV are ok, but if you're getting much of the beer's fermentables out of the corn sugar, that would explain the bad taste.
 
So, you are saying that you have 1.65 pounds of extract to 2 pounds of sugar?

And this didn't alarm you?

Try doing it the other way around. Even still, more than 30% of fermentables from sugar is way too high. 30% is pushing it.
 
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