Maximum Gravity

[eagle23]

Hey Everyone this might not be the right place to put this, But I'm curious about what the max amount of sugar that can dissolve into water is. I found a site that says that it is 500g of sugar to 100ml of water. I did all math with the unit converter and was pretty loose with rounding but when I scaled it up, and converted it to Imperial I came up with 44lbs of sugar dissolving into 1 gallon of water. Which is a gravity of 3.024.

I dont expect to ever be able to mash enough grain to hit that gravity. I'm curious though if anyone has ever looked at this or has any other information?

 

[grampamark]

I'm not a physicist, but I'm having a hard time understanding how .13 cu/ft of water can dissolve .83 cu/ft of sugar. Dampen it, yes. Dissolve it? I dunno.

 

[Smellyglove]

I believe that's at boiling temperatures. At room-temp it seems like it's more like 180g according to some source found through google.

 

[bitteritdown]

Temperature makes all the difference.

@ 0C (32F) 175 grams of (sucrose) sugar will dissolve in 100 ml of water (less space between molecules and moving slower)
@ 100C (212F) 500 grams of (sucrose) sugar will dissolve in 100 ml of water (more space between molecules and moving faster)

100 ml = 0.0264172 gal
500 g = 1.10231 lbs

1.10231 lbs = 0.0264172 gal

About 41.7269 pounds of sugar per gallon at 212F.

Specific gravity is something different. It's an indicator of dissolving 1 lb of a substance (in this case sucrose) in 1 gallon of water. Sucrose has a specific gravity of 1.046. Which is read as 46 points per pound per gallon (PPG).

 

[grampamark]

OK, so 5:1. Using English measurements a gallon of water (8.34 lbs) could dissolve 41.7 lbs of sugar @212°F. That's close to the OP's number.

Hmm. Should I consider that a limit or a goal?

 

[Smellyglove]

Will it matter if the sugar is a simple sugar, or a complex sugar?

 

[eagle23]

Thanks so much for all the fast answers. I not sure I would consider this a goal since it would take upwards for 60'something pounds of grain to hit the mark. But I also just put that gravity into brewers friend's ibu calculator and it takes a lot of hops to just move the needle a little.

 

[brewcat]

How much yeast would that require?

 

[eagle23]

If I followed the forumla correctly, at a pitch rate of 1 million cells per, it comes out to 6.1 trillion cells.

I think a better question is how much sugar can dissolve into room temperature water. Since no one is pitching yeast into boiling wort. And as it cools sugar would fall out of solution. I came up with an OG of 1.749 @ 60 degrees.

 

[doug293cz]

You can find some data on maltose solubility at different temps here: http://chestofbooks.com/food/science/Experimental-Cookery/Solubility-Of-Maltose-In-Water-gillis.html

Brew on

 

[eetu]

How much yeast would that require?

If you got that fermenting to let's say 13.6% abv, you'd get an OG of 1.67. That's still on the sweet side i think.

 

[ESBrewer]

The concentration could be too high for the yeast cells to live in. Certainly they are not going to be happy. Too much will be too much with any amount of yeast. And the result is probably not going to be a beer as we know it..