brewski09
Well-Known Member
I don't put 10% simple sugars into my beers, it was an example. Replace 10% with ANY other number you like. Sugar thins out a beer. Less sugar thins it out less. Simple. Why do we add sugar? To bump up alcohol and decrease body, whereas adding additional malt will bump up alcohol and increase body because it won't be 100% fermentable like sugar is. Extract recipes sometimes use sugar to counter the fact that you can't control mash temp and thus, can't control fermentability of the extract. A IIPA made with extract almost always has plain sugar added for exactly that reason.
Just to be clear, I'm not trying to be critical or attacking here, just engaging in a philosophical debate about methods of making the best bet possible.
Fair enough on the 10% being arbitrary. I thought maybe you were making american lagers. While a malt increase won't be 100% fermentable, you can still make up for that with the mash temp in most cases. Also, efficiency can play a huge role here. When you have a higher efficiency on the mash the finished beer feels thinner to me.
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