Priming with Corn Sugar

freedgull

Hey All

I wanted to prime my pale ale this weekend but I dont have any priming sugar or DME. 'Corn Sugar' seems to be Glucose from what I can tell. My local Health food shop doesn't carry it. They do have nice raw cane sugar. I know you shouldn't use refined cane sugar - but what about raw cane sugar...

I was thinking of using honey but it would be alot slower to carbonate...

Anyone have any suggestions on what I could pick up to prime with?


thanks

oblivious

You can use can use table sugar , brown sugar, Demerara, maple syrup, honey. You just have to all for it % fermentability i.e. is table sugar corn sugar is 99% fermentable, whereas DME can be between 70-80%. Here is a link that will tell you the amount of sugar you will need to prime. Some people believe honey is slower because it is a bacteriostatic agent, it dose not kill the yeast but can slow or inhibit their growth. But it will carbonate your beer.

A lot of English brewers add cane sugar to their bitter/pale ale and mild to give additional characteristics to their brew.

Hope it works out, I am bottling my mild to night

http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/priming.html

I have a better one around some where and will post it when I find it

noby

As oblivious said.

In general, 2-3oz table sugar will be fine. Just dissolve in about half a pint of water (or your unprimed beer) and boil for a few minutes.

bigears

You can get glucose in Tesco or any other supermarket for that matter. Usually in the sugar or baby food section.

oblivious

Hi freedgull

Just also remember that certain styles of beer need different levels of carbonation as the carbon dioxide will form carbonic acid in solution and will affect the flavor of the beer. Pale ale’s Belgian’s and Weizen beers tend to be highly carbonated. Whereas English bitter/mild and Scottish ale’s are low carbonated this allows the malt backbone come through.


Also has any heard the radio ads for Oktoberfest in the porter house?

guildofevil

Sugar is used quite a bit by Belgian brewers also.

I often throw a 500g bag of Tesco own brand raw cane sugar into wort at the start of the boil. It can thin out the body a little, which is desirable if you are making a Tripple, or other big beer which you want to be unobtrusive, or “digestible” as the Belgians call it.

When priming, I have used various sugars and never noticed any distinction. As oblivious pointed out, the amount of sugar is much more important than the type, as it is the amount of fermentables introduced which will determine the carbonation of your beer.

freedgull

put all the details in and it recommended 1oz of glucose or table sugar

that seems quite low... what do you reckon?

oblivious

It does seem low, but the BJCP suggest that English pale ale has a CO2 volume of 0.75-1.3, where as America pale ale is form 2.26-2.78 (around 4oz of sugar). You can take you pick, if you want and English style ale, which tends to be of low carbonation try 1.5oz, or more America style try 3-4oz of sugar.

noby

I tried that too, and only got 0.3oz. If it were me I would put in 3oz, but 2oz would do. In fact only last week I primed a bitter with 3oz.

guildofevil

What kind of pale ale is it?
Did you do it from a kit or a recipe?

freedgull

well Just made up a generic - probably more english - first brew in a few years

3.2 kg Light LME
Steeped 500g pale malt

1oz Northern Brewer (bittering)
1oz East Kent Goldings(Flavouring)
1oz East Kent Goldings(Aroma)
1.5oz East Kent Goldings(Dry Hopped)


http://www.flickr.com/photos/freedgull/261519483/

guildofevil

Yeah, English by the look of the hop bill.

I wouldn't worry too much about keeping the carbonation on style though. As long as it's a tasty beer, who cares about style? With all those goldings in it, it should be pretty nice.

It looks pretty dark in the pic, or is that just the light? I don't see any dark malts in the recipe.

What yeast did you use, BTW?

freedgull

I used dry ale yeast from grape and grain. Yeah it looks quite dark in that photo. Just the lighting.

I did a split boil -
Pot 1. half my extact for full hour with the bittering hops
Pot 2. half for 30mins with the flavouring hops

bigears

I find that LME darkens as it gets older, I also read somewhere that 'extract tang' is more common with LME because of the water content. I prefer to use DME which doesn't suffer from either problem. Funnily enough GnG don't stock it as a rule, although they're quite happy to order it.

I have to say, whatever the other merits of a glass carboy, it does look the part. I've often thought it would be nice to do primary in one just to see the brew progress.

Speaking of yeast, I recently tried Safale US56 dried yeast and it's the best dry yeast I've tried by a long shot. It's the same strain as Wyeast 1056 and the White Labs equivalent American Ale Yeast. It's very clean and really allows the malt and hops to come through. Probably not suitable for a classic English ale if you want a bready fruity yeast but excellent for APAs/IPAs etc.

Safale 04 (Whitbread) I hated, I tried this in a bitter and it was sickly sweet.

oblivious

Are you sure the yeast worked, sickly sweet sound like it not attenuated?

I have used Safale 04 in a stout and it was nice. US56 is very good as it has a neutral flavor and allows the malt and hops to come true more.

bigears

Are you sure the yeast worked, sickly sweet sound like it not attenuated?

It attenuated alright, went from 1.046 to 1.008. Maybe I'm being too harsh on the yeast, perhaps I overdid the malt without balancing the hops but I think the yeast was a factor. I have read elsewhere that this yeast is a bit 'homebrewish' (in the bad old days sense) although this is just an opinion - I tend to agree though. Maybe I should try it again but I'm not in a hurry.

oblivious

If you boil you’re malt extract it will result in lower hop utilization. As the boiling liquid is denser is then a full wort boil less acids from the hops will be extracted. Later extract addition is one possible away around it.

bigears

True enough, I always use the late extract method though so my problem lay elsewhere... This is the only beer I had this problem with.

oblivious

You can buy hop extract from Hop and grape, I have heard of people adding one drop of this to a pint to get more hop flavor. Although they could have been serious hop heads:eek:

bigears

I'm just adding more hops now, works for me.

noby

Would you achieve much by steeping Pale malt, being that it's just a base malt? I would usually steep crystal for a bitter/ale.

guildofevil

I sometimes culture yeast from bottle conditioned beers and have had quite a bit of success doing this. Having said that, GnG's standard dry, Gervin English Ale yeast (Same as Danstar Nottingham, apparently) is my main work horse and I must say it has never disappointed me.

The beer after next will be a stout and I'm going to use Danstar Windsor and see how it turns out.

Like Noby, I'm not sure how much benefit you would get out of steeping base malt. You would certainly be better off doing a mini mash with it.

An alternative to a mini mash is to toast your base malt in the oven, to convert it to a speciality malt and then steep that.

I love doing this for my all grain brewing and while the malt you get the first time you do it is an unknown quantity, the results are fully reproducible, provided you note down the measurements, temperature and time in the oven.

http://www.howtobrew.com/section4/chapter20-4.html Has the instructions I followed to make some nice speciality malts.

I am particularly fond of wet malt, for 1 hour, at 175C. It bubbles up with caramelized malt. I would imagine this would be a nice malt for steeping.

freedgull

yeah... I had forgotten to order grains. On brewing day was in dun laoghaire - the health food store had a bag of pale malt so I bought it and steeped it - not looking for fermentables as such - just thought it might do something positive. Would it help with head retension or the body of the beer...

Just got the ingredients for my next brew from hopshopuk
didn't forget my grains this time. Some amber malt and some roasted rye malt

Hendrixcat

Would you achieve much by steeping Pale malt, being that it's just a base malt? I would usually steep crystal for a bitter/ale.

I steeped some pale malt a while back in an all extract pale ale along with the normal crystal malt and it help with head retention and a little with the flavour. Mini mashing is the way to go with any pale base malt you might have lying around, methinks.

oblivious

guildofevil wrote:

An alternative to a mini mash is to toast your base malt in the oven, to convert it to a speciality malt and then steep that.

I love doing this for my all grain brewing and while the malt you get the first time you do it is an unknown quantity, the results are fully reproducible, provided you note down the measurements, temperature and time in the oven.

http://www.howtobrew.com/section4/chapter20-4.html Has the instructions I followed to make some nice speciality malts.

I am particularly fond of wet malt, for 1 hour, at 175C. It bubbles up with caramelized malt. I would imagine this would be a nice malt for steeping.

Hi guildofevil

That looks very interesting. Do you use crushed or uncrushed malt when toasting your malt?

bigears

oblivious wrote:

I have used Safale 04 in a stout and it was nice. US56 is very good as it has a neutral flavor and allows the malt and hops to come true more.

oblivious, as it happens there is a discussion underway on a mailing list that I subscribe to on this very subject. Here's an extract from one of the mails:

Re: > I am glad that someone else has said that about S04.
> I think it gives a real "homebrew" aroma to beer, reminiscent of the
> kits I started with 20 years ago.

At Derby festivals beers fermented with S-04 win as many prizes as any dried yeast (as a proportion of entries). Perhaps the techniques that work with other yeasts need to be adapted, but it can make smashing beer. S-04 also has a reputation for tolerance of high temperatures.

Re: is "US-56 any good", a recent test in Zymurgy suggested it was as good as WLP-001 and WY-1056, the equivalent liquid strains.

Re: "would US-56 work in a Scottish Ale?"
S-04 and Windsor would appear to fit the bill better; also I'm a recent convert to CaCl for the maltiness for which Scottish beer is renowned.

which just goes to show that my experience with S04 doesn't mean it's a 'bad' yeast. Maybe my setup was different to yours or my expectation was different. I think I could live with the flavour better in a stout incidentally. More good reviews for US56, don't know if I'll bother trying the liquid equivalent of this one as it seems perfectly good.

guildofevil

oblivious wrote:

That looks very interesting. Do you use crushed or uncrushed malt when toasting your malt?

You're supposed to use whole malt, but I used crushed and was very pleased with the results.

If you are going to do this, make sure that you use an oven dish with plenty of space above the level of the grain, as it will bubble up and the toffee like substance which results can be a pain to clean.

oblivious

Hi bigears

One thing that I have recently found is that the temperature on the out side of the fermenter can be much different to the in side. There can be a difference of 5 degrees and in big beers this can be higher. So the thermometer may read 20 c, the yeast maybe be working at 25-27 c and could produce fusel alcohols and other off flavors.

bigears

This is something that I always wonder about. Is this taken into account in the recommended fermentation temperatures? I would presume not as ambient temperature can differ so much which means that the actual temperature will be affected differently in different environments. I have a thermometer strip on my primary which always reads differently to the temperature I take with a thermometer.

guildofevil

The temperature recommendations refer to the temperature in the fermenter, not the outside of the vessel, as that depends on the material the fermenter is made out of.

Get your thermometer out, sanitize it and take a reading of the fermenting beer. You may be surprised at the difference you see.

beardybrewer

Haha! We've finally broken out of the mongoid homebrew thread. Its great to see so many threads regarding homebrew here.

FWIW, I boil a pint of water with 2/3 cup of brewing sugar, hotpress 2 weeks, then condition another couple until carbonation is complete.

Also I've used 100g of beligan candy with good results when doing belgians.