Ingredient Additions based on Sugar Complexity

[Jrod]

So I've been messing around with cider for a few weeks and I have a nagging question that I need answered.

Does yeast metabolize sugar in order of complexity?

So in a cider could you end up with more apple flavor by adding a sugar that was less complex than the apple sugar?

Or in the same line of thinking could you brew 2 gallons of beer and allow the yeast to work it's way through maltose and then rack the beer ontop of 3 gallons of cider and end up with more apple flavor than if you added the cider to your wort at the beginning and the yeast worked on the simpler apple sugars for a longer period of time?

This might also depend on if you halted fermentation at the end to retain some residual sweetness rather than letting it go completely dry.

Any thoughts?

 

[Jrod]

No one?

 

[ReverseApacheMaster]

Regardless of order the yeasts will consume all the sugars they can before fermentation ends. You don't get apple flavor from sugar. You get it from the acids and other components left behind. It's the imbalance from the missing sugar that makes it taste more cidery and less apple-like. The only way to make it sweeter to produce more of the apple flavor is to either backsweeten or add so much sugar that the yeast cannot ferment it all.

 

[Jrod]

Or if you halt fermentation before the yeast finishes the sugar. I was thinking that by cold crashing or adding agents to halt fermentation the left over sugar would be of the type that naturally occurs in apples thus giving it more of an apple flavor.