Cane Sugar...? In a pinch

Dang it! Don't have any corn sugar and I gotta bottle now! Reading that others have had good luck using regular cane sugar... I have 3 gallons of nut brown ale to bottle tonight- thinking about 2 onces of white table sugar- anyone see anything wrong with that idea! Don't want to overdo and and have bottle bombs or crappy tasting brew in a couple of weeks. Thanks!

When I was bottling I exclusively used table sugar or brown sugar. Google tasty brew priming calculator and its will give you quantities for the various types of sugars to get the volumes of carbonate desire.

I have heard that you are supposed to use a bit more by weight when you use cane sugar. However, I once substituted cane sugar exactly for corn sugar and 6 months later the beer is fine.

The differences are slight. I think you'd use about 5% more cane.

BetterSense said:

I have heard that you are supposed to use a bit more by weight when you use cane sugar. However, I once substituted cane sugar exactly for corn sugar and 6 months later the beer is fine.

Click to expand...

McGarnigle said:

The differences are slight. I think you'd use about 5% more cane.

Click to expand...

Wrong! This is bad advice and can result in bottle bombs.

Cane/Beet/Table sugar is perfectly fine to bottle with. I use it all the time. Both corn sugar and table sugar are tasteless, do the same job, but corn sugar is more expensive, while having less 'sugar' for the same weight.

Cane/Beet/Table sugar has more 'sugar' by weight than corn sugar, so you need to use less, 20% less. If you would normally use 5 ozs of corn sugar, you would need to use 4 ozs of table sugar.

Use a calculator. there are plenty of them on-line.

....... 2 ozs is an OK amount, but you should really check what you need based on the volumes of CO2 you want for the style of beer.

I use cane sugar all the time. I've tried corn sugar, "raw" sugar (some organic hippy sugar), and sugar so cheap it comes in a white bag with "SUGAR" in black writing. I have to tell you some important findings from using it. It all seems to be exactly the same. Yes, exactly the same. I have found that the little yeasts don't care how much you spent on sugar. They don't care if its organic, gluten free, almond, made from beets, corn, peas, leather or gravy. It's all sugar to them. They eat eat eat and the bottles get fizzy. I use table sugar. The amount per 5 gallons is so miniscule that I have a hard time believing it makes the least bit of difference. And it doesn't seem to in any beer I made.

I use table sugar for all my batches but the very first batch. turns out great each and every time.

use this to figure out how much you need for your style

http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/priming.html

but from your specs (3 gallons of brown ale) you'd use about 2 ounces of Table sugar

Calder said:

Wrong! This is bad advice and can result in bottle bombs.

Cane/Beet/Table sugar is perfectly fine to bottle with. I use it all the time. Both corn sugar and table sugar are tasteless, do the same job, but corn sugar is more expensive, while having less 'sugar' for the same weight.

Cane/Beet/Table sugar has more 'sugar' by weight than corn sugar, so you need to use less, 20% less. If you would normally use 5 ozs of corn sugar, you would need to use 4 ozs of table sugar.

Use a calculator. there are plenty of them on-line.

....... 2 ozs is an OK amount, but you should really check what you need based on the volumes of CO2 you want for the style of beer.

Click to expand...

Yeah I typed it backwards (need more corn), but I don't know about 20%. I'm using Palmer's numbers in HTB and he has them about 5% apart by weight.

McGarnigle said:

Yeah I typed it backwards (need more corn), but I don't know about 20%. I'm using Palmer's numbers in HTB and he has them about 5% apart by weight.

Click to expand...

I just looked it up and you are right, Palmer does have them closer together. I have always assumed cane sugar gave 46 points in a gallon and corn sugar gave 37. This is a difference of 20/25% (depending on which way you look at it).

In checking Papazian (Home Brewer's Companion), he has then at 46 and 37 too.

Leads to the question: What is the right number for specific gravity for corn sugar?

Dextrose and Table sugar are both 1.046

Dextrose (aka glucose) is one sugar, C6H12O6. Sucrose (table sugar) is two sugars, C12H22O11. With the right enzyme, yeast simply turn 1 Sucrose and 1 H2O into 1 fructose and one glucose (both C6H12O6), then ferment away. That water molecule is your 5% difference in mass. As an aside, if you're one of those people who think that when it comes to brewing, maltose is good and sucrose is bad; maltose is simply 2 glucose with 1 H2O removed.

bottlebomber said:

Dextrose and Table sugar are both 1.046

Click to expand...

Everywhere I look says there is a difference.

KK indicates the difference is 5%, and seems to understand it (I'm no chemist and not going to look it up).

If KK is correct, sucrose is 1.046 and dextrose is about 1.043.

Well, 12 posts and I've heard 5%, 20%, and 0%.

I'd like to add 10% as well:http://morebeer.com/brewingtechniques/library/backissues/issue1.3/manning.html

"Because it is the reference, only sucrose will yield 100% of its weight as extract when dissolved in water. Other sugars, even though they will completely dissolve, produce a smaller increase in density and yield something less than 100%. Dry malt extract, for example, yields about 97%, dextrose (corn sugar) about 90%."

However, we don't care about specific gravity when we're carbonating. We care about how much fermentable sugar we're adding, because every single sugar results in two molecules of CO2. The best way to measure the amount of sugar is by mass. But you have to know what you're weighing. 100 grams of sucrose has roughly 5% more sugar than 100 grams of corn sugar, because the sucrose has essentially been dehydrated. All that having been said, I use an online calculator and a gram scale.

My turn?!? Ok, I'll give my input- negligible.

Sure, there may be 5% difference, but really? What's the difference between 4.1 ounces of one and 3.9 ounces of the other? Call it 4 ounces for 5 gallons, and be done with it. Or 2 ounces for 2.5 gallons. That's fine.

Wow! I’m certainly amazed at the level of complexity that has arisen from a seemingly simple question. I did some research on (what else) the internet and found a big pile of horse poop with a few little nuggets of buried wisdom .

Quick answer was from Palmer

Boil 3/4 cup of corn sugar (4 oz by weight), or 2/3 cup of white sugar, or 1 and 1/4 cup dry malt extract in 2 cups of water and let it cool.

Click to expand...

The problem with that is using volumes to measure weight is a bad idea, especially with DME.

Then there’s this somewhat lengthy article in BYO:
http://***********/stories/techniques/article/indices/21-carbonation/1276-priming-with-sugar
Based on that the fudge factor for corn sugar to table sugar is 44/54 (.81) or 1.23 the other way (weigh?)

This matches my experience that with table sugar I use 110g, a little less than 2/3 of a cup, or 135g with corn sugar, about 3/4 cup.

BetterSense said:

Well, 12 posts and I've heard 5%, 20%, and 0%.

Click to expand...

Wynne-R said:

There’s this somewhat lengthy article in BYO:
http://***********/stories/techniques/article/indices/21-carbonation/1276-priming-with-sugar
Based on that the fudge factor for corn sugar to table sugar is 44/54 (.81) or 1.23 the other way

Click to expand...

And now 23%.

Anyone know the real answer?

Calder said:

And now 23%.

Anyone know the real answer?

Click to expand...

You could, by taking an accurately measured weight of each dissolved in an accurately measured volume of water, and checking the gravity of both.

Ooops. Forget 23%, I misread the BYO article, and got my number from the alcohol column, not the CO2. So I got out the periodic table and figured it out old school.

Sucrose is a disaccharide, a twelve chain carbon that takes 1 water molecule to break into one glucose and one fructose. Glucose and fructose are isomers of C6H12O6. If you ignore the weight of the water they would be the same as far as producing carbon dioxide. There’s your 0%

If you correctly take it into account the water weight.
1 gram of sucrose will produce .5142 gram CO2
1 gram of glucose will produce .4885 g
There’s your 5%.

Ah but there’s a further rub. The glucose you buy as corn sugar is actually dextrose monohydrate, glucose dragging around a water molecule, further screwing up the weight.
1 gram of corn sugar yields .4441 gram CO2

Therefore our new fudge factor is .8636 = 1/1.158, or 16%.

Astute readers will notice that these are the same numbers as the BYO article, I just ran it to four figures since I went to the trouble to look it all up.
http://***********/stories/techniques/article/indices/21-carbonation/1276-priming-with-sugar

That article just makes it more confusing ...... what type of corn sugar are you using? Makes me thankful that I use sucrose.

I hope you bottled it by now!