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What does it do for brewing beer?
So why not just use plain ol table sugar? Is invert sugar more fermentable?beer4breakfast said:It's a hydrolized sucrose syrup that yields glucose and fructose. It adds no character to the beer. It is used only to increase the amount of fermentable sugars, and thus the alcohol content. You shouldn't use too much of it or you'll end up with a cidery flavor in your beer. I think the recommendation is 15% or less of the fermentable sugars should come from processed sugars like invert sugar (aka, high fructose corn syrup).
RichBrewer said:So why not just use plain ol table sugar? Is invert sugar more fermentable?
cweston said:I just want to add to this thread: sugar isn't added *just* to add alcohol. It also serves an important function in many Belgian beers, for example, of keeping the FG from being too high. Because sugar is almost 100% fermentable, a 1.085 OG Tripel can still ferment down to something like 1.015 FG (that's 82% attenuation).
If that same 1.085 OG Tripel were made with all malts, you'd probably get something lore like 75% attenuation for an FG of about 1.021 and a much fuller bodied, sweeter beer that wouldn't fit the Tripel style.
the_bird said:We could argue semantics on this point; in essense, the sugar IS added to increase the alcohol, just to do so in a way that does not also increase FG (lots of Imperial IPAs do the same).
Toot said:It sounds like you know what you're talking about.... but I thought corn sugar was dextrose, not sucrose.
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