Table sugar vs. Corn Sugar

Is there a difference in taste, aroma, carbonation, etc. if one were to boil table sugar (a disacharide) into a monosacharide and use that for bottling instead of corn sugar?

Up til now, I've exclusively used table sugar for priming. no problem

SkewedAle said:

Is there a difference in taste, aroma, carbonation, etc. if one were to boil table sugar (a disacharide) into a monosacharide and use that for bottling instead of corn sugar?

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This definitely occurs just through boiling?

i gotta say that table sugar in a brew just freaks me out. i'm in a bio-chem of fermentation class, and this guy brought in some swill in a little 1 gallon makeshift fermenter, he says his friend made it with about half the ingredients of a normal ale, and then 3 lb.s of table sugar. i've never tasted the purported 'cidery' offtaste thats supposed to come from using table sugar until then, and i never want to taste it again. god that was some gross stuff.

so, i would only use the corn sugar. not sure about the di-mono conversion.

I don't know if it occurs only through boiling. If you are concerned, all you need to do to ensure conversion is to also make the environment acidic. Either add a pinch of citric acid or squeeze some lemon juice in it. Then when combined with boiling the sucrose should break into double glucose (I think 2 glu = 1 su, but someone can check me on that).

1 su= 1 glu + 1 fru

I dunno if the perported cideryness is as a result od the fructose, or of whaetever the yeast does to break the bond between the glu+fru...

I am positive that boiling the table sugar alone is enough to convert from di to mono. My question isn't really answered yet though, is there anybody who has used this and notices a true difference between table and corn, because i want my HefeWeissen to be pretty foamy...

drengel said:

this guy brought in some swill in a little 1 gallon makeshift fermenter, he says his friend made it with about half the ingredients of a normal ale, and then 3 lb.s of table sugar. i've never tasted the purported 'cidery' offtaste thats supposed to come from using table sugar until then, and i never want to taste it again. god that was some gross stuff.

so, i would only use the corn sugar. not sure about the di-mono conversion.

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I see your point, Drengel, but I think there is a pretty large difference between using the sugar needed for carbonation, such as the 6grammes pr. litre for carbonation that I used in a batch I did recently, and then basing the entire brew on it. Also, 3lbs for a gallon? Jeez! The added sugar itself would be enough to make that brew about 14% ABV!! If there was malt in there as well I'd be surprised if the ABV was much less than 17-18%

I'm sort of hoping I'm reading that wrong and that the batch itself was larger - such as a standard 5 gallon batch or something, but even with that amount I'd never even consider adding 3lbs of sugar of any kind!

To me, it sounds more like a misguided attempt at making alcohol as such than brewing beer.

Cheers,

Jens-Kristian

I'm with Jens. At the amount needed to achieve carbonation I highly doubt you'll notice any difference between the two. Once you start hitting levels where the yeast have to do alot of work to get through it all, then you'll start to see (taste) off flavors as drengel notes.

Concerning boiling the sugar to hydrolize the table sugar, I think a boil alone might suffice, but I'd wager there would be a significant difference in the time needed using an acidic solution vs straight tap water; but I'm honestly not sure off hand.

i've used powdered sugar to prime with in a pinch... no noticable difference, the beer carbonated and i couldn't really tell the difference.

Call me crazy or whatever, but I usually go with the tried and true, like anti-freeze in my radiator and oil for my engine...

If I wanted to make swill/hooch using alternate ingredients I'd go to prison...

I'm here to make good brew.:rockin: 99% of the beer I drink I make myself. Life's too short to drink bad beer. I use only proven ingredients.

you prime with anti-freeze and engine oil? hows that do?

hey. kinda on the same subject. a friend of mine has the mr. beer deal and it says to use table sugar. i gave him some priming sugar(corn sugar) that came with a kit of mine that i kegged instead of bottled. he is only gonna have 20 beers or so so he is going to prime each bottle. any body know how much to use for each bottle?

Use a carbonation calculator like on the home brew digest website to determine the amount of the priming sugar for the volume (2 gallons?) and divide by 20.

I have not primed with table sugar but I have used it in several beers at 10-15% of the brew with no problem and no cider flavors. The amount of sugar you use to prime is what, maybe 1% of your beer? You will definitely not mess up your beer.

Table sugar is good enough in a pinch. St. Louis Hollistic. Article says there is a 5% difference in glucose and fructose between cane (table) sugar and corn syrup (which I believe is the same thing as corn sugar, but it's in liquid form).

The other thing to look at is what sugars the yeast eat. Maltotrois, maltose, dextrose, fructose and glucose (in order from the hardest sugar for the yeast to consume to the easiest sugar for the yeast to consume). With that said, the two easiest sugars for the yeast to eat are fructose and glucose, which is what makes up both cane sugar and corn sugar.

The corn sugar homebrew shops sell is dextrose, the left hand isomer of glucose.

High fructose corn syrup has been processed with the goal of producing a glucose/fructose balance similar to sucrose so it could be used as a replacement to sucrose.

I have primed exclusively with table sugar for ages. boil as usual, no problems, no off flavors. As others have said, at the relatively minute amount (i use about 2/3 C for 5 gallons), the flavor thing really isn't an issue.

I'm pretty sure that if you used corn sugar in the ratio stated above it would still taste terrible.I would think that any kind of simple sugar in that ratio would stress out the yeast. Not saying that it is bad to use a lot of sugar. Some stronger belgians like golden strongs and tripels can use a ton of table sugar but they use techniques to avoid wearing out the yeast to soon and have a larger malt base to keep the ratio of malt to simple sugar acceptable.

I'm pretty sure that if you used corn sugar in the ratio stated above it would still taste terrible.I would think that any kind of simple sugar in that ratio would stress out the yeast. Not saying that it is bad to use a lot of sugar. Some stronger belgians like golden strongs and tripels can use a ton of table sugar but they use techniques to avoid wearing out the yeast to soon and have a larger malt base to keep the ratio of malt to simple sugar acceptable.

I have used table sugar on every brew but my first one a couple of years ago. The 4 or 5 ounces of sugar will not affect taste, it will only affect your wallet as table is a fraction of the cost of corn.

use this website to figure how much you need: http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/priming.html

I would suggest that the OP just select any kind of sugar to prime with and go with it. I mean, it's been nearly five years. Bottle it already!

You guys have some mad necromancy skillz. Props on keping the board clean & lean.

I can't taste a difference for priming. As a matter of fact, I add plain old table sugar for the sugar portion of my Belgians and for priming with no off flavors.

I recently made the switch from corn to table sugar for priming. So far it seems to work better. The head seems to be tighter/creamier with smaller bubbles.