Healthy home brew?

[mrbeachroach]

Need some help here. I can't seam to find any answers online, so I need The homebrew talk scientist here to think through this with me.

A few questions:

Everyone knows by now that massive amounts of sugar are bad for your health,

So dumping 10-15 lbs sugar in wine home brew or 5# in beer, over time seems like a big problem down the road for us on our health.

Does the fermentation process make the refined white sugar we all use any better for consumption once the yeast eats it and makes alcohol?

If you let a wine go dry is it better for you than if you stopped the fermentation earlier and didn't back sweeten it?

Is unrefined sugar like brown cane better than using white refined sugar?

Are there any even better ingredients for fermentation?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Yooper]

Need some help here. I can't seam to find any answers online, so I need The homebrew talk scientist here to think through this with me.

A few questions:

Everyone knows by now that massive amounts of sugar are bad for your health,

So dumping 10-15 lbs sugar in wine home brew or 5# in beer, over time seems like a big problem down the road for us on our health.

Does the fermentation process make the refined white sugar we all use any better for consumption once the yeast eats it and makes alcohol?

If you let a wine go dry is it better for you than if you stopped the fermentation earlier and didn't back sweeten it?

Is unrefined sugar like brown cane better than using white refined sugar?

Are there any even better ingredients for fermentation?

Thanks in advance.

If you let a wine go dry, and ferment out totally, there is no sugar in it.

The type of sugar doesn't matter- sugar is sugar.

I'm not sure consuming boatloads of alcohol is healthier than boatloads of sugar.

I don't eat sugar at all, and have cut out all sugary foods like ketchup out of my diet since about 2010. But I do drink dry wine, and I love beer (which does have some carbs in it). Since much of the sugar is fermentable in beer, fermentation reduces the amount of sugar and it's replaced with alcohol and co2.

 

[Talgrath]

Why would you dump that much sugar in homebrew? But setting that aside, drinking any sort of alcohol really isn't healthy; beer and wine has some health benefits (mostly related to heart health and stress levels, in moderation) but it is not healthy. As to your main question, the difference between white refined sugar and brown sugar is pretty much nil (for reference: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/12/health/nutrition/12real.html?_r=0); brown sugar or raw sugar has some additional minerals, but it is in miniscule amounts and it actually has more calories than white refined sugar. From a fermentation standpoint, both sugars are simple sugars that will be consumed almost entirely, creating alcohol, so calorically and glycemically things are going to turn out the same in a beer. So, bottom line, beer, whether homebrewed or brewed by a large conglomerate, is not a health food and the type of sugar you put in doesn't matter aside from flavor.