carbonation with syrup

[thelastdandy]

i am planning on brewing a sierra nevada/dogfish head life and limb barley wine clone that i came up with. they carbonate with birch syrup and i'm having trouble finding out how much of this to use. i can't find a potential SG for the syrup or anything. any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Revvy]

Can you find ANY nutritional info? What you really need to find is an amount of sugar OR carbohydrates per a set serving size.

The October 2010 Basic Brewing radio was all about alternative priming methods, and the guest (who btw, although he is a minister, from michigan, and is an expert on bottling, is NOT ME, but the coincidence is freaky) offers info on calculating how to prime with strange things.

I'm working on the calculation for using Date Palm Syrup from Bangladesh to prime my Sri-lankin stout.

October 28, 2010 - Alternate Priming Sugars
Home brewer Drew Filkins shares his technique of using alternative ingredients to put the bubbles in his brew.

Click to Listen-Mp3

Hydrometer readings and sugar content charts from HomeWinemaking.com http://www.home-winemaking.com/winemaking-2b.html

Basically what you need to do is look for the sugar or carbhydrate amount in the syrup and the serving size, they are defining it by.

You also want to first calculate how much corn sugar you would normally use to carb to whatever style you are aiming for, then convert that to grams. Then based on the amount of sugar (OR CARBOHYDRATES if sugars is not listed, which on some products labels they don't) per whatever serving size they give, you then will know how much of the stuff to use..


Ie, my stout I want to carb to 2.45 volumes of co2, which measures out to 4.3 oz of corn sugar at 70 degrees.

That works out to 121.9 grams....

I am planning on carbing it with some Jaggery Mollasses that I found at a bangladeshi market.

I found online via google, that it contains 12 grams of sugar/tablespoon. So to get to 122 grams I need about 11 tablespoons.

That works our to about 5/8 of a cup. I will add that to enough water to get to 2 cups and boil it.

Listen to the podcast for a better explantaion..

If you CAN'T find any nutritional info (which by law I thought it has to be posted somethwere) you're going to have to fudge it...you can treat it as mollasses, or honey and use the recommended measurment. I have a chart in my bottling thread that shows honey, maple sugar et al.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/bottling-tips-homebrewer-94812/#post1030376

 

[Revvy]

10 seconds with google netted me this info. Your google-foo sucks I hope ya know

http://www.alaskabirchsyrup.com/abbisy.html

This is the standardized Alaskan birch syrup nutrition label for pure birch syrup. It is to the American standards. Nutrition levels in Uncle Berwyn's Yukon Birch Syrup may be different.

20 grams of sugar/ 2 tbs spoons.

Same for Forbe's brand...http://www.wildfoods.ca/products-syrups-birchsyrup.html

I'd use the 20 grams/2 tbs as your base amount.

 

[Revvy]

*crickets*

 

[thelastdandy]

wow. thanks for the extremely quick and thorough answer. i'm probably overcomplicating this in my head since i've never carbed with anything other than dextrose. so i would use the 20g of sugars and not the 25g of total carbs, right? thanks again

 

[thelastdandy]

never mind. i read right past the part where you clearly explained that!

 

[Revvy]

Yeah, If the actual amount of sugar is present I would go with that. I got the impression from the podcast that you will usually find one or the other. Your stuff is the first that I've seen both.

Now remember the 121.9 gram baseline in terms of corn sugar is derived from a carbonation calculator. Based on the style of the beer, where in the carbonation range for the style I want it (I opted for right down the middle of the style) and the temp of the beer. That would be equal to adding 4.3 ounces of corn sugar, which is less than the 4.5-5 ounces most kit carbers are aiming for.

If I were trying for a highly carbed belgian I would obviously be using more. ANd would need to re-calculate it in a calculator.

 

[thelastdandy]

thanks again revvy. i'm honored to have a homebrewtalk legend take the time to help me out with this!

 

[Revvy]

I was really excited to get to share what I JUST figured out over the last couple of days. I'm really looking forward to using more and more alternative priming things. Reading about your syrup got me pumped to tray that in a beer as well.