Pure Via Stevia sweetener

[Aarong2008]

Has anyone ever used this to sweeten their cider? I bought some the other day, backsweetened, and bottled yesterday with the carbonation drops. I noticed after I finished on the Pure Via Stevia box, they add dextrose to it. Will this cause bottle bombs?
http://purevia.com/Purevia/PureVia.aspx

 

[Maylar]

Hard to say, but dextrose is certainly fermentable. I'm gonna have to watch for that when I get mine - thanks for the tip.

 

[Aarong2008]

No problem. I'll update this thread if there are any cider explosions or not.

 

[stuper]

Judging from the nutrition info in the link you posted I wouldn't be too worried.

It looks like the dextrose is just kind of a "carrier" substance for the reb A extract, which is likely because the extract is so sweet (about 300x sweeter than table sugar) that without some kind of filler the packet would contain like 10 little crystals lol.

Since it's listed as <1g sugars, you're looking at approximately somewhere between 0.5 to 0.9 grams dextrose (typical priming sugar) per gram of PureVia you added.

How much did you add to how much cider? Unless you added like 100 packets I wouldn't be worried at all. A typical carbonation charge for a fairly fizzy cider at 3 volumes for 5 gallons would be on the order of 200g of dextrose. Add to that the fact that bottles should be able to survive more than that and I'm pretty confident you'll be OK. Bottles may be a bit more fizzy than typical but probably won't explode.

As a side note it seems kinda skeezy to call this a "calorie free sweetener", since really it's more like a "very low calorie sweetener." I guess it's not so bad though, even assuming it contains .9g of dextrose per pack you're only looking at like 3.6 calories per pack lol.

 

[Maylar]

So I picked up a small bottle of Stevia at the local vitamin shop, and it says malodextrin is added. Whatever that is...

This stuff had better be concentrated - a 6.5 oz bottle cost $29

 

[stuper]

You should be safe there. Maltodextrin is a polysaccharide used widely as a thickener, and notably, to artificially increase body/head retention in beers.

Meaning it's unfermentable by yeast. You should be perfectly safe with that.

And yes it's expensive stuff but like I said, 200-300x times sweeter than sugar. A small amount can go a long way if you're careful.

 

[Aarong2008]

Thank you for the reply.

I didn't add too many packets, I only added 13 packets to 2 gallons of cider. So i am most definitely in the clear of bottle bombs ha.

It is sketchy. I also noticed that dextrose is a carbohydrate so it must have done calories to it.