Newbie question... how much sugar

TheDuke

Hi all,

I'm new to home brewing and have been scowering the great wide web to well the point of general paralysis and now struggle to recall my name never mind recognising my own childern.:o . Firstly I doing 10l batches, technically 2 x 5l as I like the idea of screwing up small rather than big one demijohn at a time.

I get DME, LME, etc and the many ratios but the one that has eluded me is sugar - what is the approx ratio of 1l to g of sugar I should 'reasonably' use in my batch and when is it 'just too much'?

I think I have one of the latter brewing but I won't know till another 12 sleeps.

Thanks!

The Duke

Bogwoppit

I'm not sure I understand, if you're using malt extract then you don't need sugar.
The only sugar you'll need is for carbonation, I add between 45 and 65 g for a 21 litre batch. You add this when bottling.

Bw

oblivious

An don't carbonate in a demijohn, they are not pressure tested

MrGee

As above poster says you dont need sugar for the beer if your using extract, extract is a sugar. If you add extra sugar you will add more alcohol. If you used 1kg of dry extract and added about 200g of sugar you would end up around a 5% beer based on 21l batch.
Go to brewersfriend website and look at there calculators, there free and you can work out how much alcohol to expect by adding differant fermentables. Think its the all grain abv calculator which gives the option of using extract both liquid and dry. I found them to be quite accurate.

TheDuke

Thanks guys,

I had an 'out of the tin' Coopers Wheat bear that asked for adding 300g spray malt and 200g sugar for better results. It was a 20l recipe so I halved everything as I was making 10l but since I didn't have any spray malt (this is just another name for DME right?) I added all as brewing sugar... and was a little generous too.:o

What I'm taking from the above though is - you don't have to add it but if you do then stick to 200g per 20l or in my case 100g per 10l. I broke that rule by about 400%... let's see how it works out. :rolleyes:

Thanks again all - this was REALLY helpfull as I wanted to get the right ratio into my head.

I am about to make another batch so here's my thinking for a 10l recipe:
Coopers Light LME 1.5kg (base)
Bohemian Pils Grain 200g (flavour) & Crystal Grain 100g (consistency)
Brewing Sugar 100g (alcolhol) - THANKS!
Hops 30g (25g 10 min / 5g 45 min)
Irish Moss (clearness)
Boheamian Pils Yeast

Is that way too rich or does that sound ok?? I've a terrible habit of 'overspicing' food so this is probably in the same area.

I'm not looking to make anything specific but really something in the direction of a Grolsch/Bohemian type Export beer.

Thanks again all.:D

Regards,

The Duke

loyatemu

Bogwoppit wrote: »

I'm not sure I understand, if you're using malt extract then you don't need sugar.
The only sugar you'll need is for carbonation, I add between 45 and 65 g for a 21 litre batch. You add this when bottling.

Bw

seems very low - I bottled a 12L batch of pale ale at the weekend and used about 70G of dextrose (based on the calculator here). I've previously bottle-primed, this was my first stab at batch priming... have I created bottle bombs?

BeerNut

My calculator generally gives me somewhere between 110 and 130g for fairly low carbonation of a ~20L batch.

MrGee

TheDuke wrote: »

Thanks guys,

I had an 'out of the tin' Coopers Wheat bear that asked for adding 300g spray malt and 200g sugar for better results. It was a 20l recipe so I halved everything as I was making 10l but since I didn't have any spray malt (this is just another name for DME right?) I added all as brewing sugar... and was a little generous too.:o

What I'm taking from the above though is - you don't have to add it but if you do then stick to 200g per 20l or in my case 100g per 10l. I broke that rule by about 400%... let's see how it works out. :rolleyes:

Thanks again all - this was REALLY helpfull as I wanted to get the right ratio into my head.

I am about to make another batch so here's my thinking for a 10l recipe:
Coopers Light LME 1.5kg (base)
Bohemian Pils Grain 200g (flavour) & Crystal Grain 100g (consistency)
Brewing Sugar 100g (alcolhol) - THANKS!
Hops 30g (25g 10 min / 5g 45 min)
Irish Moss (clearness)
Boheamian Pils Yeast

Is that way too rich or does that sound ok?? I've a terrible habit of 'overspicing' food so this is probably in the same area.

I'm not looking to make anything specific but really something in the direction of a Grolsch/Bohemian type Export beer.

Thanks again all.:D

Regards,

The Duke

Im no expert but i reckon youll get around 4.2-4.5% out of that. Its more then acceptable for a wheat.
The reason you use extract over sugar is that it gives the final beer more of a mouthfeel. Sugar instead of extract can make the final beer more watery in the mouthfeel. Try use that site i mentioned, it will tell you What alcohol level you will get from adding differant ammounts of sugar/ extract to your beer.

Bogwoppit

loyatemu wrote: »

seems very low - I bottled a 12L batch of pale ale at the weekend and used about 70G of dextrose (based on the calculator here). I've previously bottle-primed, this was my first stab at batch priming... have I created bottle bombs?

It's personal taste, I add crushed wheat to my brews for good head retention and I find if I add more sugar then you can't get at the beer for all the head in the way.

Corvo

So I now have the malt extract etc. but the sugar for bottling - what should I use?

BeerNut

It doesn't matter. Table sugar will do.

Corvo

BeerNut wrote: »

It doesn't matter. Table sugar will do.

Great, thanks BeerNut.

TheDuke

Thanks all for the great advice.

It's been 6 1/2 days. There are still bubbles at about 2 per minute but I decided to bottle one of the demijohns with the suggested sugar levels (adjusted to 5l)

I know you should never try your beer at this stage but hey, like every kid I have to taste the doe.

I think I'm already onto lessons learned;
a) It looks like a cloudy beer but head retention is short lived
b) It tastes 'yeasty' midly reflects a beer taste but theres is a slight sour taste which I understand are condaminants
d) if forgot to take the OG so the FG doesn't matter much but does seem to have alcohol in it

I used tap water for the mixing so I'm going to assume that it's not clean and a few 'nasties' made their way in - would that be it?

I'm going to make a 5l batch by the above recipe suggestion so boiling everything for a bit and see how that turns out - once I'm a little more confident I'll step things up in ltres.

Comments welcome.

The Duke

Bogwoppit

TheDuke wrote: »

Thanks all for the great advice.

It's been 6 1/2 days. There are still bubbles at about 2 per minute but I decided to bottle one of the demijohns with the suggested sugar levels (adjusted to 5l)

I know you should never try your beer at this stage but hey, like every kid I have to taste the doe.

I think I'm already onto lessons learned;
a) It looks like a cloudy beer but head retention is short lived
b) It tastes 'yeasty' midly reflects a beer taste but theres is a slight sour taste which I understand are condaminants
d) if forgot to take the OG so the FG doesn't matter much but does seem to have alcohol in it

I used tap water for the mixing so I'm going to assume that it's not clean and a few 'nasties' made their way in - would that be it?

I'm going to make a 5l batch by the above recipe suggestion so boiling everything for a bit and see how that turns out - once I'm a little more confident I'll step things up in ltres.

Comments welcome.

The Duke

Final gravity is very important, it's the only way you'll know fermentation has stopped, bubbles are a bad indication.
I think you've been a bit premature with the bottling, you might have some little bombs there.
I leave it at least 2 weeks before I think about bottling although that's probably a bit longer than most.
Once the final gravity stays at the same level for a couple of days then it's stopped fermenting, time to bottle.

TheDuke

and already my first question, guideline on steeping is to bring the water to 70C and then steep the grain for 30 mins but do i continue to heat the water to try and keep it at 70C or do I let it cool down over that 30 mins. thanks

TheDuke

sorry Bogwhoppit... only just read your response - I've put the botles into the shower, with the doors closed, in a bowl and and a tower over... because I think you're right. I also now get the FG point... read it a million times but it never went in. Thanks

Bogwoppit

TheDuke wrote: »

and already my first question, guideline on steeping is to bring the water to 70C and then steep the grain for 30 mins but do i continue to heat the water to try and keep it at 70C or do I let it cool down over that 30 mins. thanks

Bring the water to 70, add the grain, it will drop to 64-66. Try keep it there for at least 45 mins, preferably an hour.

BeerNut

Bogwoppit wrote: »

Try keep it there for at least 45 mins, preferably an hour.

For steeping specialty malt? I generally just give it 20 mins. I doubt you'll get much extra out over an hour. It's not like you're mashing.

TheDuke

Thanks guys!

The aventure continues - I boiled off way more water than i thought and by the time it went to the demijohn i was at just about 3 litres not 5+.:(

My gravity reading shows 80ish :eek::eek: which leads me to believe it is very very rich... would I be right there, isnt beer supposed to start at 40

anyhow, the wort taste like really rich malt beer... pretty rich and nice actually.

I've pre-hydrated the yeast and it's looking good. The wort is now at 24C... it's going in... go do your thing! :cool:


"... hand me another demijohn Igor... we have more monsters to create..."

BeerNut

You can always boil and cool another 2L of water and bung that in. It'll give you a starting gravity of 1.048, assuming all your measurements are correct.

Bogwoppit

BeerNut wrote: »

You can always boil and cool another 2L of water and bung that in. It'll give you a starting gravity of 1.048, assuming all your measurements are correct.

Do this, unless you have a speciality yeast then you will end up with a beer that is very very sweet and you'll probably have bottle bombs/gushing bottles too.

loyatemu

just top it up to 5L with water - there's a lot of paranoia about using tap water, but all the 23L kits suggest topping up with cold water and I've never had one go bad as a result.

TheDuke

Thanks guys, I left it as it was as I was thinking of what soup tastes like when you cool it down with tap water... Going to be anal about boiling everything.

I threw away the contents of my second demijohn and am re brewing a 5l batch this time easy on the ingredients and enough water.

I'm looking at the one I made yesterday and it was at 22 degree when my house was at 18 at the time. Crazy action with mad swirling.

TheDuke

Just finished the next one. It is not as sweet or thick as the last one and thoug i stuck religously to the hops amount and adding times it seems a little bitter - I used Bullog 3-5% so should be safe. OG is around 55 so I'm going to take it that I made a better job of the mix this time.

Just a question; when I transfer to the demijohn i sieve out all the 'bits' on the way (have funnnel with a sieve) - that correct?

Other question; cooling down is a pain and I've read that you could use pre-chilled boiled water. Is that a good idea or does it influence the taste - I'm just trying to get the time down on the whole process.

In any case - it already looks great. Now the long wait starts.