What are your thoughts on the use of sugar in brewing real ale? There's an interesting post and comments on the subject in a recent blog:
http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2009 ... ewing.html
A quick look through the recipes posted in the recipe forum shows that most of the homebrew recipes do not specify sugar, but rather are all-malt beers. Do you think omitting the sugar when cloning a beer is beneficial or detrimental?
Sugar in place of malt
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delboy
Re: Sugar in place of malt
Well if you want to clone a commercial ale that uses sugar in the recipe (and there is a lot of them) then it certainly is detrimental to the process to omit it. That said i don't think that article makes a particularly good case for the use of sugars/adjuants in brewing other than to say its needed to correctly clone commercial beers (not always a good thing) or to compensate for hazes etc from historically crap ingredients.Benjy Edwards wrote:What are your thoughts on the use of sugar in brewing real ale? There's an interesting post and comments on the subject in a recent blog:
http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2009 ... ewing.html
A quick look through the recipes posted in the recipe forum shows that most of the homebrew recipes do not specify sugar, but rather are all-malt beers. Do you think omitting the sugar when cloning a beer is beneficial or detrimental?
It doesn't address the key reason that i can see for the addition of sugar that is to balance/dry a beer to make it refreshing or less cloying depending on the recipe.
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mysterio
Re: Sugar in place of malt
I agree with delboy, that seems quite a bizarre article to cite in favour of sugar, unless you're a cost-cutting commercial brewery. The reasons in the article I can see are:
1) Expediency. Beers brewed with sugar mature faster. I think this is pretty controversial personally!
2) Reviving sluggish ferments and saving space. Neither are particularly good reasons for using sugar, if the aim is making the best beer possible. If you've got a sluggish fermentation, the last thing on your mind should be using sugar.
3) Sugars are good quality these days, and are essentially the same thing as malt derived sugars. I think this is a pretty ridiculous claim. Make a low gravity bitter with all malt and one with 10% brewing sugar and you'll know the difference!
I do think there is a place for sugar in brewing though. I'm drinking a homebrewed brown ale with about 5% sugar in it. I'll tend to use it if i'm using a British yeast and the gravity is over 1.050 to keep the beer drinkable. It's an alcohol booster - nothing else.
1) Expediency. Beers brewed with sugar mature faster. I think this is pretty controversial personally!
2) Reviving sluggish ferments and saving space. Neither are particularly good reasons for using sugar, if the aim is making the best beer possible. If you've got a sluggish fermentation, the last thing on your mind should be using sugar.
3) Sugars are good quality these days, and are essentially the same thing as malt derived sugars. I think this is a pretty ridiculous claim. Make a low gravity bitter with all malt and one with 10% brewing sugar and you'll know the difference!
I do think there is a place for sugar in brewing though. I'm drinking a homebrewed brown ale with about 5% sugar in it. I'll tend to use it if i'm using a British yeast and the gravity is over 1.050 to keep the beer drinkable. It's an alcohol booster - nothing else.