malta goya

[kid mode]

Possibly a bizarre question but I was looking at the ingredients of this popular Puerto Rican drink, Malta. Malted barley, water, sugar, hops. That sounds familiar. I dumped them all in a jug, added some water and yeast and let it go. Bottled it and I now have a very strange, on slightly beer-like beverage.
This stuff is basically wort. What do you guys know about its possible uses. I just made up the recipe on the spot so I didn't expect anything great.

 

[uglygoat]

malta has no alcohol that i'm aware of, at least the stuff you can buy in the stores has none.... it's a sweet drink, very filling

 

[kid mode]

no alcohol for sure. But, lots of sugar. Add yeast and there you go. But, what is the final result comparable to? How much water would you add to the malta wort?

 

[AlaskaAl(e)]

I would say depending on your sugar-to-hops ratio and the variety of sugar and yeast you could have just about anything. The yeast will eat the sugar and make alcohol, that's for certain. How efficiently and to what flavor outcome is dependent on the type of yeast/sugar. What was your recipe? Maybe with all the info we can do a little fortune telling.

 

[kid mode]

Well, I bought a six pack of Malta, drank one. Didn't care for it and thus began the experiment. Took the remaining 5(total 35oz)
added about 70 oz. water, 1 cup sugar and a little yeast. I just made it up with no research or experience. The sugar I'm now seeing was entirely unnecessary. It's probably to blame for the cifery taste and heavy carbonation of the end result.
I don't remember the O.G. but it finished at 1.006 after fermenting about a week.
That's all the info I can remember.
Malta is really thick and dark. It seems like it would lend itself well to a dark beer. I just don't know if it already has too much sugar in it.

 

[beergod35]

Brew Your Own magazine had a article on Malta a few years back that talked about using malta to grow your yeast. There is too much cane sugar in it to make it a decent fermented beverage on its own. At least I don't think so. Cane sugar produces a cidery (Old Milwaukee) taste I don't care for. But your yeasty sure like it. Just pour most of the liquid off the top and add the slurry to your wort. Viola.

 

[fezzman]

Wow, proof that the search button works.

I was going to post this very question today. I was looking at a different brand of Malta yesterday and was wondering about adding yeast. The particular brand, which I can't remember, contained the following: Barley malt, water, high fructose corn syrup, a second kind of malt, and hops.

Since this has corn syrup, I was wondering if it will ferment without giving a cidery taste. Sometime soon I think I will put an airlock on a gallon jug and see what happens when I pitch some yeast. I'll probably add a bit of water but I just don't want to dillute it too much. It'll just have to wait until I can make it back to the lhbs so I can get a cheap yeast. Hmm, maybe I'll go uber ghetto and use bread yeast. lol

Do you think gravity readings would give an accurate abv count?

I'm also wondering what would happen if a few bottles were added to a full batch of stout, prior to pitching. Hmmm.....

 

[SpectralSamurai]

Wow, proof that the search button works.

I was going to post this very question today. I was looking at a different brand of Malta yesterday and was wondering about adding yeast. The particular brand, which I can't remember, contained the following: Barley malt, water, high fructose corn syrup, a second kind of malt, and hops.

I don't think that particular brand would work, specifically due to the HFCS. There's a really big debate raging right now about health concerns of it, but I won't go into that. That bit aside, from everything I know about it (not too much, to be fair) It's basically not really a sugar, at least, not as far as food for yeast is concerned. Ever wonder why you can drink a 44oz soda and not feel like you're going to explode? Your body doesn't process HFCS the same way it does sugar, it basically doesn't even recognize that you ingested anything.

In Thailand, all the soda is still made from Cane Sugar, the bottle sizes are still around 8 oz. Just one of those fills you up the way American HFCS based soda completely fails to. For an experiment, drink one of the HFCS Malta, note how full you feel, then repeat the experiment the next day with a sugar based malta (Malta Goya) under the same conditions and note the difference.

That's not to say you shouldn't try brewing it, but I don't think there's anything in it for yeast to feed on. Anyone have any experience with HFCS as a sugar subsitute?

 

[Carne de Perro]

I've never used it myself. but it should be yummy yeast food. While yeast prefer glucose, they can (and will) consume fructose with no real problems. Glucose and fructose both have the same atoms, the arrangement of those atoms is just different.