All dextrose sugar is not equal

Due to my economic situation, and past history, I am a simple brewer. That is to say, one can of hopped malt extract, and dextrose sugar does it for me. Some folks tell me that’s not a good way to make beer. I disagree. Mine taste great. I make one or two grain kits a year, but the simple way is the main way.
I live over 100 miles from the closest home brew store, so I usually order cans of malt syrup online, and buy the dextrose sugar at the closest homebrew store, 50lbs at a time. That last me over a year. I should have called first, but when I drove up to Columbus, Ga., they were sold out of the 50lb bags of dextrose. I found some dextrose online at honeyville grains on Brigham City, UT this was produced by Tate Lyle. The cost was a little cheaper once the gas savings was realized. I got the 50lb sack home, I knew I was in trouble when I tried to add a teaspoon of the dextrose to my morning cup of coffee, because one teaspoon of brewer’s dextrose, or cane sugar should produce a mild, known amount of sweetness. This was not the case.
This was later confirmed when I produced a wort from a can of Cooper hopped malt. I normally add 10-12 cups of dextrose for a starting SG of 1.040 or 1.050. Sadly, I only got about a lower density reading, so I had to add more sugar. I’m still working out exactly how much more.
My question is this. Are there more variants of dextrose being produced? Varying degrees of sweetness? How can I tell what is best for beer making?
Because of the shipping cost, I am most likely stuck with my purchase. If any readers need dextrose, stay far away from the Tate Lyle product.
Thanks!

Dextrose *should* be the same all around. However, this would be for PURE dextrose. Each manufacturer might offer this dextrose combined with other things. This may be what's going on. I'd check to see if there are other additives in this dextrose product. Maybe contact the company. This particular product may only contain a percentage of actual dextrose, but this should be on the label.

Do you have any of the previous dextrose available? If you do weigh one cup of it and one cup of the new dextrose for comparison. The new dextrose may be larger grains. The one cup by volume may be less than a cup measured by weight.

Ah, the old fillers thing.... "just add corn starch, they'll never know the difference." That's what they did I bet.

A quick search of Tate & Lyle shows that they make Dextrose for industrial confectioner and baking needs. I suspect it is not 100% dextrose on purpose to accommodate those industries needs. I wonder if your beer contains any non-fermentable sweetners? It might turn out a bit on the sweet side, perhaps you've discovered a secret ingredient to a great beer?

No chance the T&L dextrose would be cut with anything without saying so on the label. Maybe the granulation is an issue as mentioned earlier.

Another theory: any chance you ordered (or they mistakenly sent you) a 50lb sack of maltodextrin?
http://shop.honeyville.com/maltodextrin-50lb.html

Great suggestions! I do need to buy a little dextrose to prime with. I don't trust what I bought from honeyville. I'll compare weight and volume. The real test will be when I finish making the batch I started this past weekend. But that will be 3-4 weeks.
I do plan to call the manufacture, maybe get some answers. What I bought is here. http://shop.honeyville.com/dextrose-50lb.html

Thanks for your friendly help!

dry ingredients are best measured by weight not volume.

If you're trying to make beer on the cheap why are you using dextrose when you could buy table sugar from the nearest grocery store for 50 cents a pound or less, or even cheaper in larger quantities and make equivalent beer?

Glucose can can take multiple tautomeric forms that have different taste levels of perceived sweetness. If you take a typical sweetener (like dextrose) and leave it in a hot beverage, the sweetener will convert into tautomeric forms that are less sweet. It is possible that the dextrose/glucose was processed in a way that promoted greater concentrations of less sweet forms.

pdxal said:

If you're trying to make beer on the cheap why are you using dextrose when you could buy table sugar from the nearest grocery store for 50 cents a pound or less, or even cheaper in larger quantities and make equivalent beer?

Click to expand...

I have tried that. I found that cane sugar produces a unpleasant aftertaste. Beet sugar, even more so. A half and half mixture of corn/cane sugar is about as cheap as I can go, without the harsh aftertaste.

I could pick up the sugar packets everytime I went to a cafe, till I got enough for a batch. NAW- thats too cheap.

I don't use dextrose. Once I realized that yeast breaks down sucrose to the base sugar in corn sugar with no difference in the final product, I've used table sugar exclusively. I think I still have a 10 year old 3 lb bag of corn sugar with my brewing stuff - just too lazy to go to the basement to get it to use it.

I think there are a couple of different corn sugars with different 'sugar' contents. I have no clue of the chemistry, maybe one is 'drier' than the other, or is broken down to different sugars that weight different. I think one has 36 gravity points, and the other is in the low 40s, about 15% difference is 'sugar' content per lb.

Or the T&L sugar is confectioners sugar, which is cut with baking powder (or something like that), and shouldn't really be used for brewing.

It seems that every product which is produced in the USA is suspect unless the government makes a law regarding it's purity, and then it's still suspect.

Same **** here in Finland as well. The EU forced sellers of meat "products" to list the actual meat percentage on the label. The EU said that sausages containing less than 70% meat could not be labeled as A class sausages. Caused a ****storm among the Finnish sausage manufacturers who were used to providing something with 50% flour, 45% salty water, a synthetic skin and 2-3% actual meat of which most was fat.

They've tried everything under the sun to avoid selling us real, unadultered juice, real cheese, etc. Lately, they've taken to injecting most meat cuts with salt water in order to raise the weight significantly without dropping the price at all. They think that people are ****ing idiots or something.

And don't even get me started on how the USA doesn't respect any of the EU food purity labeling laws (champagne, feta, parmesan, parma ham, cognac, etc).

How about some Wisconsin Cheddar with some California Chianti