Sugar

[BarrowBoy]

Hi Folks (first post from me),

I've done about 4 all-grain brews (some better than others but reading this forum and 18,000ft.com I think I know where some of the mistakes have been made) and all recipes have come from Dave Line's book 'Brewing Beers Like Those You Buy'.

I notice that quite a few recipes on here (Jim's standard for example) don't call for the addition of sugar whereas all Dave Line's recipes add it in some form.

Does a good mash produce enough fermentable sugars from the malt alone?

[steve_flack]

There's plenty of beers both commercial and homebrewed that get all their fermentable sugars from the mash alone. There are two reasons to add sugar to a beer. One is to dry out a beer as sugar ferments completely making a beer less sweet - useful for strong beers. The other reason is cheapness. Malt costs more than sugar.

Dave Line's book is fairly old and the range of grains available now is much better than when the book was written. Also Dave was trying to emulate commercial beers and many of those use a small amount of sugar (see reason two).

[Scooby]

Yes, but you know what they say about cracking eggs

Many people over the years have used DL,s recipe's with great success and DL didn't earn the reputation he has by formulating crap recipes

Various sugars can add their own flavours add as long as they don't contribute more than about 10% of the fermentable sugar are fine to use

Having said that many believe that all grain means just that.

Of course what Steve says is correct, reason 3 IMO is the flovour unrefined sugar such as muscovado or molasses impart.

[steve_flack]

Many people over the years have used DL,s recipe's with great success and DL didn't earn the reputation he has by formulating crap recipes

Did I say they were crap or in any way impeach his reputation? No

They are fine recipes especially considering the basic range of malts he had to work with.

I'm just saying that if he'd had the ingredients we have available today he would perhaps have done things differently.

[Scooby]

Many people over the years have used DL,s recipe's with great success and DL didn't earn the reputation he has by formulating crap recipes

Did I say they were crap or in any way impeach his reputation? No

They are fine recipes especially considering the basic range of malts he had to work with.

I'm just saying that if he'd had the ingredients we have available today he would perhaps have done things differently.

Steve I didn't see you post when I wrote mine! you just beat me to it. I added an edit with reference to you when I saw you post

BTW In Wheeler's BYOBRAAH nearly 50% of the recipes include white sugar. mine is the 1998 version so quite up up to date.