I am trying to find out there is a simple way to measure the levels of fermentable sugar in my wort. No I'm not talking about using a hydrometer or refractometer to measure the total sugar, I'm only interested in the fermentable sugar (e.g. maltose, sucrose, fructose, glucose, galactose ...).
My interest primarily stems from a few batches that seem to have stopped early for unknown reasons. Typically this is caused by yeast problems (not enough, wrong temp, inadequate oxygen or nutrients) or lack of fermentable sugar. I can make educated guesses about why, which usually decides my next course of action, but I would like to know with more certainty what the problem is before attempting to blindly fix it.
Thus, my first thought is to determine whether my mash has somehow left me with a significant amount of un-fermentable sugars. To do this I presume I would need to at a minimum measure the proportion of fermentable sugar with the amount of total sugar. The delta would hopefully give me a good approximation of un-fermentable sugars that exist.
I was hoping there might be a kit to do this, but I can only find ones for wine that detect levels of glucose and fructose (monosaccharides), which doesn't help much considering wort has mostly maltose ( a disaccharide). So the options as I can see them would be to find a method for measuring the disaccharides in solution or find some kind of disaccharidase enzyme to help break down the disaccharides into monosaccharides for analysis using the Wine kits.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Jaime
BTW - The brew that initiated this post is a 1.082 SG Saison being fermented with WL565 yeast. The sugar extraction was much higher than expected so I am a little low on yeast. I mashed for 90 minutes at around 143-145 to improve extraction of fermentable sugars. I added two lbs of dextrose, so I know at least that sugar is fermentable. After two days the gravity dropped 1.022 SG to 1.060 SG, but the bubble rate is now very slow (once every 15 seconds) and there is little activity on top of the wort in the fermentor. Fermentor has always been kept in the 80-85 degree range, which is what I have read this yeast likes. I know saisons slow down after a few days, but this seemed too aggressive of a slowdown, so I wanted a way to determine if I screwed up the mash (which seemed to go very well).
My interest primarily stems from a few batches that seem to have stopped early for unknown reasons. Typically this is caused by yeast problems (not enough, wrong temp, inadequate oxygen or nutrients) or lack of fermentable sugar. I can make educated guesses about why, which usually decides my next course of action, but I would like to know with more certainty what the problem is before attempting to blindly fix it.
Thus, my first thought is to determine whether my mash has somehow left me with a significant amount of un-fermentable sugars. To do this I presume I would need to at a minimum measure the proportion of fermentable sugar with the amount of total sugar. The delta would hopefully give me a good approximation of un-fermentable sugars that exist.
I was hoping there might be a kit to do this, but I can only find ones for wine that detect levels of glucose and fructose (monosaccharides), which doesn't help much considering wort has mostly maltose ( a disaccharide). So the options as I can see them would be to find a method for measuring the disaccharides in solution or find some kind of disaccharidase enzyme to help break down the disaccharides into monosaccharides for analysis using the Wine kits.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Jaime
BTW - The brew that initiated this post is a 1.082 SG Saison being fermented with WL565 yeast. The sugar extraction was much higher than expected so I am a little low on yeast. I mashed for 90 minutes at around 143-145 to improve extraction of fermentable sugars. I added two lbs of dextrose, so I know at least that sugar is fermentable. After two days the gravity dropped 1.022 SG to 1.060 SG, but the bubble rate is now very slow (once every 15 seconds) and there is little activity on top of the wort in the fermentor. Fermentor has always been kept in the 80-85 degree range, which is what I have read this yeast likes. I know saisons slow down after a few days, but this seemed too aggressive of a slowdown, so I wanted a way to determine if I screwed up the mash (which seemed to go very well).