Sugar to Malt Extract ratio?

[cmoon]

So lately I've been using turbinado sugar to increase my OG, but always kept the amount substantially lower than the amount of malt extract I'm using. For instance, if a recipe called for 10 lbs DME, I might substitute 2 lbs of DME for 2 lbs of turbinado.

How is this changing the overall taste of the beer? color? mouthfeel? Is there a certain percentage of the fermentables that the sugar should not go above? For instance, 11 gallon batch I want to make in a week, I was planning on adding a HUGE 3 lbs of turbinado (15% of the fermentables). Is this too high? Should I bite the bullet and change those three lbs back to DME?

 

[ChshreCat]

Swapping out DME for sugar will thin out the mouthfeel of the beer, decreasing the malt profile of the beer. It can also lighten the color depending on the recipe and type of DME used.

As a general rule of thumb, I wouldn't go above 10% of total fermentables as simple sugar and you're already up to 25% if you're using 8lbs of DME and 2lbs of sugar. Too much sugar can also lead to off flavors and could have detrimental affects on your ferment if you're adding it all at the start. Many times when people do a recipe that has substantial amounts of simple sugar, they add them in the fermenter after fermentation starts to wind down.

In my opinion, if the recipe isn't designed for a bunch of sugar, I wouldn't do it. Much better to start with a recipe that uses it in the first place. If you want to give your recipe a boost, you'd probably be better off adding a bit more DME rather than sugar. Although, if you do that, you may want to adjust your hop schedule to match because you would be throwing the recipe out of balance.

 

[cmoon]

Swapping out DME for sugar will thin out the mouthfeel of the beer, decreasing the malt profile of the beer. It can also lighten the color depending on the recipe and type of DME used.

Thanks. Yeah, I'm working on a barelywine and saw the % for turbinado going up to 15% and felt uncomfortable with that. Thanks for the info.

 

[rocketman768]

...and you're already up to 25% if you're using 8lbs of DME and 2lbs of sugar.

A little off-topic, but this is 20%, not 25%.

 

[ChshreCat]

A little off-topic, but this is 20%, not 25%.

Ahh yes, with your primitive human math. I'll use that instead.

 

[devilishprune]

For a barleywine, you may want to add a little bit of simple sugar to the beer so that you don't end up with syrup at the end.

Yes, it probably changes all of those factors that you said, but if you can notice it or not is another thing. The only way to tell would be to do one with sugar and one without.

 

[dzlater]

DME and Turbinado sugar have the same extract potential, so how are you raising the gravity?

 

[dcp27]

DME and Turbinado sugar have the same extract potential, so how are you raising the gravity?

+1. However, it'll lead to a lower FG so still a raise in abv.

 

[PT Ray]

I'll use 20% by weight with LME without any adverse effects. However, I'm not just throwing it in there to bump up the ABV. With out any sugar I was getting around 72% ADF which was leaving my 1.044 beers finishing around 1.014. This is a little higher than I like so I started working recipes backwards sort of speak. I would design them around what I wanted my finishing gravity to be and then use sugar to get the O.G. back up to 1.044. So to get my 1.044 O.G. down to about 1.010 it was taking about 20% sugar by weight.