Flaked corn vs. corn sugar (dextrose monohydrate)

Will using corn sugar give a beer a different flavor than mashing flaked corn? I'm brewing a cream ale.

corn sugar will dry it out, I do not believe flaked corn will do the same thing

of course mash temperature also comes into play

S_M

That makes sense. I guess corn sugar will be totally different.

Thanks

MikeBTexas said:

That makes sense. I guess corn sugar will be totally different.

Thanks

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I use corn sugar when I want to a beer to have a dry finish like a west coast APA

I have been wanting to do a cream ale with grits and minute rice but being up north

finding grits in the store is not so easy, so I will be using flaked corn from LHBS and rice flakes

all the best

S_M

MikeBTexas said:

Will using corn sugar give a beer a different flavor than mashing flaked corn? I'm brewing a cream ale.

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Completely different.

I think I'll use grits. Grits here are like finding rice, many brands to choose from. Thanks

Flaked corn or rice can be mashed to add to the beer,but dextrose dries it out,or is more commonly used to carbonate with.

If using grits is it 1:1 to flaked corn ?

MikeBTexas said:

If using grits is it 1:1 to flaked corn ?

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that is how I was going to do it and use the minute rice 1:1

I am going to do a 11.5 gallon batch of cream of three crops

but will do it with flaked maize/corn and flaked rice

all the best

S_M

I used corn meal and white rice when I wanted to do a light color, light flavor, light in alcohol beer. I ground the rice in my Corona mill. The only thing that went wrong for me was the light in alcohol part, ABV 5.5% wasn't what I had planned but great efficiency got me there.

RM-MN said:

I used corn meal

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I will have to give that a try as corn meal is easy to come up with but grits no so much

thanks

S_M

Very different and perhaps I can explain why.

Corn sugar is pure dextrose which only has a sweet flavor. There are no additional compounds to impart flavor, mouthfeel, or head.

Flaked corn contains cellulose, starch (needs to be mashed to convert), protein, a little oil, and various trace organic compounds. The protein should contribute to head retention and will contribute to mouth feel along with any residual starches after mashing. The cellulose remains in your spent mash along with grain husks and the oil content is pretty much negligible, so no worries about head retention. The trace organic compounds are what give flavor to the corn.

Both dextrose and flake corn will increase the gravity of your beer, but as some have said dextrose is better for drying out the beer without adding flavor. Flaked corn imparts mouthfeel, head, and creaminess, and sometimes corn flavor.

Thanks for all the good info.