Down sides to using sugar? US IPA's

[phatboytall]

I'm looking at a lot of American IPA recipies at the moment, and most of them seem to use some form of sugar to boost the OG and presuambly not to over load with maltiness. E.g. Piny the Elder

What are the down sides to using sugar to help boost OG? Can it be done successfully without leaving a horrible taste?

Ive read a few people saying adding plain white sugar mid fermentation is the best way to boost the OG?!

Any real life success stories welcome please

Thanks
Ed

[critch]

lots of comercial recipes use sugar to boost gravity its fairly standard practice, putting it in mid ferment helps to stop the yeast straining itself with big gravs

if your putting it in mid ferment make sure its sterile!

[lancsSteve]

Sugar has an undeservedly bad name in brewing - maybe something from the reiheinsgebot as a 'purity stanbdard' or the unscrupulous brewery accountants...

Adding cane sugar to the kettle is fine - thins the body a little which is often welcomed in higher abv/OG beers and essential in Belgians. Beet sugar less good by some acocunts but if it's added to the acid and boiling conditions of the kettle should invert.

Never had off tastes with using *some* sugar (10% or so) - should leave no taste, though using less refined sugar e.g. jaggery, piloncillo, demerera can add *nice* flavours. Making your own candi sugar is easy to do and gives colour and flavour as well.

If your reasons are good (to thin the body a little or add a certain flavour) then sugar is great to add and will have good results, if your reasons are bad (saving money and boosting alcohol by saving on grain) then it will have the effects corner-cutting usually has.

[phatboytall]

Cheers,

Are you talking about standard granulated sugar? or do you need to buy the special Glucose or dextrose sugars?

how do you make it sterile? boil up in a pan with water? Did i read somewhere you add a touch of lemon juice (citric acid) to "invert"?

Thanks!
Ed

[lancsSteve]

I use tate & lyle (cane sugar) rather than silver spoon (beet)

Add it in the kettle - take off some wort into a pyrex dish, mix in the sugar to a syrup (you don't want to dump it in and have it drop straight down and stick to your element!)

Making invert sugar is easy but rarely necessary, though belgian candy style adds nice flavours and colouring - http://www.franklinbrew.org/brewinfo/candi_sugar.html

As long as it's not too high a proportion bung it in the kettle rather than secondary.

Or just use some golden syrup if you can get smart price / basics type one and can't be bothered to make your own - that's already inverted. Adding sugar in last 15 mins of boil in acid wort should invert it anyway though.

[phatboytall]

Awesome, great information! Thanks!

Imperial IPA here i come!

[lancsSteve]

I'd def use some sugar in an imperial - flaked maize/corn is a similar body thinner / alcohol booster used in many US beers.

I tipped a can of malt extract in mine and worked a charm...

[Barley Water]

Adding sugar has a very bad name in homebrewing because in the bad old days (and yeah, I was there then and actually did some of the evil stuff mentioned in the urban legends) we made beer by using a tin of malt extract and dumping a bunch of table sugar into the wort. Generally speaking, the malt was old, we used a very high percentage of sugar and on top of all that, we used very questionable yeast and had no temperature control. What we ended up with was a very thin beer that had a very "winey" taste and quite ofter had the oft mentioned "extract twang". Besides all that, depending on what season of the year the beer was made, there was also alot of phenols and esters with alot of fussel alcholols so you got alot of hot, fruity flavors as well.

This hobby has come a long way in 25 years. Adding sugars (and other adjuncts) to beer is just another tool you can use to control the way the final product comes out. As mentioned above, our buddies the Belgians are the masters of adding different fermentables to actually enchance the taste, color, body and alcholol levels in their beers. Once you get your brewing processes down, I would highly recommend playing around with the various sugars used in brewing, your beer will thank you for it. By the way, there is nothing wrong with adding a little sugar to a very big beer to control the residual sweetness and reduce the body of the beer to make it more drinkable. I have done alot of playing around with sugar as well as other grain adjuncts and have been pretty happy with the results.

[smdjoachim]

I tipped a can of malt extract in mine and worked a charm...

Glad you said that,I plan on adding a tin of malt extract when I make a imperial stout,as my mash tun would be to small if I wanted more then a gallon.

Did you add it towards the end of the boil?

[lancsSteve]

It was a massive mash and split boil - half a UK pale ale half an American one so I lobbed the whole can in the american one. THink I added it early on - needs 15 minutes to sterilise and the time its added will affect the OG which will affect hop utilisation but I'm not sure quite how... or how much...

Good way with small kit - extract + mini-mash is the technique you're then using.