Fructose Free Beer??

[Leeroy_beer]

There is a big push for gluten free beers but I'm wondering if anyone has any info on fructose free beers. I'm happy enough to brew with Dextrose but I'm not sure of the Fructose implications of the malted barley, hops and yeast.

I need to cut or at least limit fructose out of my diet (Fructose Malabsorption) but there is no way beer is going. Since I have been brewing with Dextrose all is well but I want understand the breakdown of the other ingredients. Any thoughts?

 

[Yooper]

There is a big push for gluten free beers but I'm wondering if anyone has any info on fructose free beers. I'm happy enough to brew with Dextrose but I'm not sure of the Fructose implications of the malted barley, hops and yeast.

I need to cut or at least limit fructose out of my diet (Fructose Malabsorption) but there is no way beer is going. Since I have been brewing with Dextrose all is well but I want understand the breakdown of the other ingredients. Any thoughts?

For my beer, I use malt, water, hops, and yeast. No dextrose. Can you digest maltose, the main sugar in malt? I'm not sure of the chemical differences between maltose and fructose, but if you don't have a problem with dextrose, then I assume beer is fine.

 

[pjj2ba]

Yeast can freely metabolize fructose. As long as you're not doing high gravity beers, the yeast should be able to chew it all up.

 

[JLem]

There should be little, if any, fructose (or glucose or maltose or sucrose for that matter) left in your beer. I suppose if you yeast poop out because of a high ABV you might have some. The unfermentable sugars that give beers residual sweetness are complex polysaccharides (i.e. dextrins), not the aforementioned mono- and disaccharides.

 

[david_42]

Fructose will ferment 100%. My GI doesn't like fructose either, but I've never had a problem with homebrew. I do stick to dry meads, though.

Weird how sucrose (being glucose plus fructose) doesn't cause trouble, but I'm told that sucrose breaks down in a different section of the intestine.

 

[JLem]

Weird how sucrose (being glucose plus fructose) doesn't cause trouble, but I'm told that sucrose breaks down in a different section of the intestine.

I wonder if you suffer from this - Fructose malabsorption - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Looking at the diet part, it says that glucose helps with the absorption of fructose, so foods with more (or equal) glucose than fructose tend to be OK. Sucrose would be OK then.

 

[Killer_Robot]

Grain-based beer shouldn't have any fructose in the first place: the sugars all come from starch breakdown and so are all glucose-based. Non grain-based sweeteners (table sugar, candi sugar, honey, fruit) are the only things likely to add fructose to your beer, and those will tend to ferment out completely unless your ABV is going onto the double digits and the yeast tire out.

 

[Kaiser]

Grain-based beer shouldn't have any fructose in the first place: the sugars all come from starch breakdown and so are all glucose-based. Non grain-based sweeteners (table sugar, candi sugar, honey, fruit) are the only things likely to add fructose to your beer, and those will tend to ferment out completely unless your ABV is going onto the double digits and the yeast tire out.

There is some sucrose and fructose in grains. Here is a table with data I got from the Briggs book:

Starch Conversion - German Brewing Techniques

Sucrose is the transport sugar in plants. I.e. it is used to move sugar from the leaves to the grains where it is converted to clucose chains (a.k.a starch). It is natutural that some is left in the grain.

But as others said, fructose and glucose are the first sugars that are consumed by the yeast. Even high ABV beers should have little unless you prime with sucrose or DME.

Kai