Candy Sugar vs DME

[RedGuitar]

Brewing a stout this upcoming weekend that should have an OG of 1.073 and an FG of 1.017 using Wyeast London Ale yeast. I was originally planning on using 5.5 lbs light DME (this is partial mash) but am now considering changing it to 4 lbs light DME and 2 lbs home made candy sugar. What difference will this make in flavor/body? I was thinking of making the switch with the hopes of drying this out some, but according to the recipe calculator this will be about the same. (Or should I replace some of my grains with candy sugar to dry it out?)

 

[Revvy]

using candy sugar will make for a thinner body than if you went all malt. That's why we add sugar, especially to belgian beers to achieve the same gravity amount without the heaviness of malt.

However, sugar does play an essential role in Belgian brewing. It allows you to brew strong beers without the heavy, full body typical of barley wines. Depending one the style you're brewing, you can use at least a pound of sugar per 5 gallons for beers of 1.060 and up. For triples you may want to go substantially higher than that.

For all-grain brewers, brewing with sugar lets you increase your original gravities without increasing your mashing and lautering capacity. My zapap lauter tun maxes out at about 15 lbs of grain, but by adding sugar to the kettle I can increase either the gravity or the quantity of the finished wort.

Some people find it difficult to imagine that sugar actually dries a beer out, but the science behind it is fairly simple. Plain sugar is 100% fermentable by brewers yeast. Corn sugar, candi sugar and even regular table sugar, are simple sugars and brewers yeast can eat and ferment all of them completely. The sugars produced by mashing malted barley and much more varied and some of them are complex types of sugar which yeast can’t ferment. The typical mash made from100% malted barley is about 75-85% fermentable by the yeast, and as a result 15-25% of the sugar is left over in the finished beer, which is what gives beer it’s richness and sweetness. To make higher alcohol beer, you normally use more barley to extract more sugar, and if 15-25% of the sugar is left in the finished beer, then the more barley, the more leftover sugar, and the sweeter the beer. If you make a high alcohol beer and use sugar and malt, you increase the amount of sugar in the wort, but the percentage of residual sugar in the beer is lower, because you started with a higher percentage of fermentable types of sugar. The use of sugar is what makes a 9% alcohol Belgian Tripel a drier beer than a 9% alcohol barley wine, which is typically brewed from all malt.

Go get a 9% ABV Belgian Dubbel or Tripel, and a 9% or more Barleywine, and do a side by side comparison. They both will have similar grainbills, and obviously have the same alcoholic content, but the bodies will be completely different.

 

[CTownBrewer]

I would save yourself the time & just use plain old table sugar or corn sugar. There are a lot of pro brewers who feel like they get the exact same results with corn sugar as they do with candi sugar. Like Revvy said, they are both going to do three things...thin out your beer, dry out your beer, & increase your ABV.

 

[david_42]

If you want to keep the ABV the same, only use 1.3 lbs of sugar.