Why not Dilute strong beer to make MORE beer?

[geeyoupee]

I know companies will do high specific gravity brewing and then dilute because its more efficient and they can make different abv like you said but "proper" companies put more malt, hops, adjuncts, and yeast into the wort.

But with bud light, there's fermentation of dextrins which is different than high specific gravity brewing. The question is, does coors and bud do high specfic gravity brewing with more ingredients or are they just diluting it? Another scenario could be that the normal bud or coors has always been diluted and its the norm.

 

[dwarven_stout]

Most people tend to say it like dextrin gives most or all of the body feel, which he does not feel is true. More of the some of all the molecules of stuff. Sure the dextrin gets fermented and there's less of it but he believes that the dilution lowers the body feel. Say a beer has 10% molecules of ingredients (on the high side)and 90% water. Bud light goes from 6% to 4%, that's like adding havings 1.5 times the water of the original beer. So the 10% of molecules will be only 6% (so 94% water).

If I recall correctly, he tested it in the lab by adding dextrin to beers and seeing if there was more "body" to it and he said you had to add significantly high amounts to notice anything.

I'm not real big on hearsay brewing lectures from someone who's never brewed a batch. I can also do math, so made up numbers are not particularly meaningful.

Anyone who's studied brewing understands that there are multiple components to mouthfeel: alcohol warmth, carbonation, "creaminess" (due to proteins or glycerol), and body (due to dissolved solids of various natures). The BJCP hammers this knowledge into their judges, because the most common-sense thing you can do to fix a "watery" beer is mash your fermentables at a higher temperature to produce a more dextrinous wort. Everyone who has brewed an AG batch has mashed too hot on some occasion, and sat frustrated when the FG came out 3 points high.

Dextrins are a major component of the dissolved species in finished beer, along with 5-carbon sugars and tri-saccharides like maltotriose. Of course dilution decreases 3 of the 4 above elements of mouthfeel. Still, saying that dextrins are not a major contributor to body in finished beer is silly and goes against a fair portion of brewing literature to date. A beer with a FG of around 1.010 has around 2 POUNDS of dissolved "stuff" in 5 gallons. Of course he had to add a lot of dextrin to beer to notice a difference. It's also worth noting that "dextrin" is a term that covers everything from just a few glucose molecules in a branched chain up to twenty. If you want to see what a full strength beer without dextrin is like, drink a saison and tell me how the body compares to a robust porter or scottish 80/-.

 

[geeyoupee]

I didn't mean to offend anyone but I'm just reiterating what I've been taught from my brewery professor. I'm not sure if what he's saying is all correct or it could be his opinion. What I meant to get across was that my professor feels that it's not all about the dextrins. He feels that dilution lowers body feel more than fermenting the dextrins.

His definition of dextrins from his book is that dextrains are maltotetraose and larger sugar molecules that are unfermentable.

I don't think comparing a saison and porter for body feel is scientific because it's comparing different things. If I really wanted to test this, I would take a two bud lights and add dextrins to one bud light and compare them.

Honestly, I'm not that experienced in brewing or beer tasting. I just like to drink and try out different beers. I'm not trying to lecture people in brewing or anything. I'm just putting it out there that there are different trains of thought. My professor made it obvious that people feel the loss of body from bud light was from the loss of dextrins and that he thought differently.

Yeah, so anyone reading my post, take it with a grain of salt.