made some apflewein, but not with dextrose

Ok, to make the story short, I was at the store, bought the 5 gallons or juice, but they didnt have corn sugar, only cane, so I bought 2 lbs of powdered sugar and used that (PITA by the way)


Will this produce different flavors than the corn would?

I used 1 lb dextrose and 2lbs dark brown sugar. Thoughts on that as well?

(Not to hijack your thread)

Short answer, yes it will change the flavor.

However, don't worry, it will still be good. My first batch of Apfelwein I used brown sugar instead of corn sugar. It was good and tart. My second batch I used corn sugar (buy from online homebrew stores if you can't find it locally) and it is good, but not as tart.

Update, it is still good. I had about 5-6 oz of it as a test since it's 1 week into carbing, and its pretty F'n good!

Powdered sugar is generally a bad idea, not because of flavor but because it includes corn or wheat starch used to prevent caking. Since that won't ferment, what doesn't settle out will cloud the end result. But if you're not worried about appearances that's not so important.

Killer_Robot said:

Powdered sugar is generally a bad idea, not because of flavor but because it includes corn or wheat starch used to prevent caking. Since that won't ferment, what doesn't settle out will cloud the end result. But if you're not worried about appearances that's not so important.

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Not worried with appearances, but it came out really really clear.

I read somewhere that refined sugar causes massive hangovers...

RobWalker said:

I read somewhere that refined sugar causes massive hangovers...

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Refined sugars aren't going to cause hangovers. Poor fermentation temperatures will cause fusel alcohols and other products that give worse hangovers, as can lack of overall nutrients in the ingredients, just due to extra stresses on the yeast producing less predictable chemicals. Adding yeast nutrient is pretty good practice for making wine or cider from juice though, so relying heavily on refined sugars doesn't change much there.

Where refined sugars (dextrose, white sugar, HFCS, etc) differ is simply in that other flavors have been purified out of them. This means that they boost alcohol content without any real flavor contribution, as opposed to adding honey/maple syrup/molasses/fruit concentrates which boost ABV and add additional flavors. I have heard people claim that sucrose/fructose based sugars will give a fruitier flavor than pure dextrose, but if so it's very subtle relative to the other differences.