Hi,
I am an amateur brewer who has found an interest in making ciders using store bought apple juice as a base. As such, the ciders tend to become quite sour (or "dry" to use a commonly used euphemism) and I have been looking into various ways to add sweetness, e.g. adding non-fermentables such as xylitose, lactose etc.
However, I am living in South Korea and such additives tend to be bit expensive and/or hard to come by, this led me to search for cheaper alternatives.
In my local supermarket, I came across something called "oligosaccharides", made from either corn, rice or other grains. It is a liquid sweetener, commonly used for cooking here in South Korea. So, I thought that "hmmm, maybe I can use it for creating residual sweetness in my ciders?" and yes indeed; A small non-scientific test, based on gravity readings, showed that a mixture of water and oligosaccharides was fermentable (using S-04) to somewhere in the range of 30-50% (closer to 30 than 50, but I was not accurate enough with readings to say for sure).
Next I made a cider using apple juice, black tea (for tannins) and oligosaccharides, OG was ~ 1068 and FG about 1020. I tasted it yesterday and actually it is TOO sweet, but other than that it seems to do the job; I have cider with a residual sweetness (now it's primed and bottled and I'm waiting to see if it will carb up as it should). Samples tasted allright, not as great as commercial ciders, but I think it could become quite nice after a few months in the bottles. The oligosaccharides seems to impart a slight almond/cherry/marcipan taste, but 1) it's quite subtle and 2) I think it plays quite well with the apple juice.
My question is this: Can anyone (especially any biochemists out there) think of any reason why this is bad idea? I have googled quite a bit, but cannot find anyone using oligosaccharides in their brewing. This, could be because oligosaccharides is not so common in non-asian countries (I don't recall having seen oligosaccharides in shops anywhere outside of Asian countries), but it could also be because it's a really bad idea for one reason or another.
For example, the fermentation of oligosaccharides could produce big amounts of methanol or similar bad side-products (sorry if this sounds laughable, although I am a scientis, I have no concept of biochemical processes
).
Anyone can think of any reasons why not to use oligosaccharides in brewing/fermentation?
I am an amateur brewer who has found an interest in making ciders using store bought apple juice as a base. As such, the ciders tend to become quite sour (or "dry" to use a commonly used euphemism) and I have been looking into various ways to add sweetness, e.g. adding non-fermentables such as xylitose, lactose etc.
However, I am living in South Korea and such additives tend to be bit expensive and/or hard to come by, this led me to search for cheaper alternatives.
In my local supermarket, I came across something called "oligosaccharides", made from either corn, rice or other grains. It is a liquid sweetener, commonly used for cooking here in South Korea. So, I thought that "hmmm, maybe I can use it for creating residual sweetness in my ciders?" and yes indeed; A small non-scientific test, based on gravity readings, showed that a mixture of water and oligosaccharides was fermentable (using S-04) to somewhere in the range of 30-50% (closer to 30 than 50, but I was not accurate enough with readings to say for sure).
Next I made a cider using apple juice, black tea (for tannins) and oligosaccharides, OG was ~ 1068 and FG about 1020. I tasted it yesterday and actually it is TOO sweet, but other than that it seems to do the job; I have cider with a residual sweetness (now it's primed and bottled and I'm waiting to see if it will carb up as it should). Samples tasted allright, not as great as commercial ciders, but I think it could become quite nice after a few months in the bottles. The oligosaccharides seems to impart a slight almond/cherry/marcipan taste, but 1) it's quite subtle and 2) I think it plays quite well with the apple juice.
My question is this: Can anyone (especially any biochemists out there) think of any reason why this is bad idea? I have googled quite a bit, but cannot find anyone using oligosaccharides in their brewing. This, could be because oligosaccharides is not so common in non-asian countries (I don't recall having seen oligosaccharides in shops anywhere outside of Asian countries), but it could also be because it's a really bad idea for one reason or another.
For example, the fermentation of oligosaccharides could produce big amounts of methanol or similar bad side-products (sorry if this sounds laughable, although I am a scientis, I have no concept of biochemical processes
).Anyone can think of any reasons why not to use oligosaccharides in brewing/fermentation?
