Corn Syrup is NOT corn sugar

Howdy interested beginner,

I too am a beginner brewer by all means, and only recently have I determined I have been getting something very wrong from the start. It is related to bottle conditioning of beer, specifically naturally priming the beer with sugars.

!CORN SYRUP IS NOT CORN SUGAR!


The first 5 batches of beer I made I primed with corn syrup, I instinctively thought it is the same as corn sugar. It wasn't until I experienced several under carbonated batches of beer did I realize something was wrong.

If you can not find corn sugar in liquid form (usually from brew stores) then use common table sugar. weigh out the proper amount and dissolve it in 1 cp of water and boil it for 10 minutes. Place that in your priming bucket before the beer and ensure it mixes thoroughly.

Cheers and Brew Strong,
Matthew

Sort of...

The grocery store stuff is likely not a solution of pure dextrose (according to the Karo website, it's only about 15%-20% dextrose). Also, it often has vanilla and salt added. If you can find some that includes only dextrose, then it is absolutely a substitute.

It WILL work to prime your batches, but you'll need to add a bit more by weight than if you were using corn sugar, since there is water content. However, as you found, table sugar is likely a better option for priming if you're out of corn sugar.

Did you forget to account for the fact that corn syrup is only ~70% solids so that you need to add 1.42 times as much?

Yeast can chew up fructose nearly as well as they can glucose. I am fairly sure that yeast can only utilize monosaccharides. This means they first have to break the sucrose into glucose and fructose, which is what corn syrup is.