Priming Sugar

[Vossy1]

Once again, very helpful DaaB

[mysterio]

I try to use DME if I've got some, as (allegedly) it produces smaller bubbles and a more even head. However I usually use corn sugar (brewing sugar).

[IanRMartin]

I plan to use DME, but as i havn't got the first brew underway yet I can offer no pros or cons.
Ian

[shaunmarrison]

Does anyone use honey?

My Local (The Shed, Norwich) is brewing Fat Cat Honey at the moment - it is delicious!

I assume that the honey is added as a Priming Sugar, rather than when preparing the wort?

[mysterio]

Honey contains all sorts of enzymes and bacteria that you don't want to introduce to your beer unless you've boiled it... so if you're going to prime with it make sure you've done this. Honey beers are usually made with honey and a proportion of honey malt. You can either add the honey to the last few minutes of the boil (so as not to drive off the flavour compounds) or if you don't want to boil it, pasteurise it at 80C for a couple of hours then add it to your beer at high kraeusen.

[Reaper]

Hi All
As a few of you know im a little tinker with the old domestic sugar I cant resist putting it in everything. I drop ½ a teaspoon of sugar in my bottles, my next brew I want to try DME, I’m going to try half with sugar and half with DME and see if I can taste the difference.

Regards Paul

[Horden Hillbilly]

I am the one who voted "other". If I bottle my brews I use a mix of 40g spraymalt/40g glucose. The reason behind this is that I tend to bottle my brews a good few months before I intend to drink them, the glucose builds up pressure quickly & the spraymalt does so slower, giving the yeast something to "chew on" while maturing. I mix this with warm water, bring to the boil, allow to cool then add to my brew without stirring. I do this before I sterilise & rinse my bottles which takes about 2 hours, I have had no problems using this method.

My King Keg brews are normally primed with 100g of glucose boiled in water, cooled & added to my king keg. As a infrequent drinker (2-3 pints, 2-3 times per week) I find that I can normally at least get halfway down the barrel before I have to use gas.

Excellent post by the way daab, much appreciated.

[Jim]

Interesting to here all the views on this!

I've always used ordinary granulated sugar for priming, usually about 2oz in a 5g barrel. While I can see the arguments re the pros and cons of different types, I remain to be convinced that there's much of a difference in the final product, given the small quantities involved.

[tribs]

I agree with Jim. I don't think it makes much difference what you prime with, its only a small amount of sugar, so you might as well go with whatever's easiest.

I picked up some corn sugar which I like because it dissolves easily. I'd not think twice about using domestic sugar again when I run out though.

[PieOPah]

AFAIK the ONLY drawback of using regular sugar for priming is the amount of sediment produced.

Whatever you use to prime is in such a small quantity that it won't effect the taste. I don't know much about how it will effect the head and it is only in this thread that I have seen anything mentioned about it before. For that reason alone I think it would be worth using DME for priming. I think that rather than doing this I would probably put aside a pint of unfermented wort and use that.

The price of DME completly puts me of using it to prime

£3.09 for 500g of DME or about £0.40 for 500g of sugar.

[tribs]

I would imagine any refined sugar is going to have less sediment than wort or extract after fermentation, but I'm no expert.

With the latter you are also likely to get a protein ring that'll need scrubbing from your bottles/keg rather than a quick rinse after they have been emptied.

I suppose I'd consider it if I decided to try to abide with the Reinheitsgebot for a traditional german style brew

http://brewingtechniques.com/library/ba ... hcomm.html (although he is a yank)

QUOTE Shortly after starting to home brew (and after reading about Reinheitsgebot, the German Beer Purity Law of 1516), I began to get philosophical about my beer and pondered whether to prime with corn sugar (dextrose) or with dried malt extract (DME). I'd like to share my observations about the pros and cons of priming with DME and dextrose.
Because DME has only about 60-80% of the fermentables of dextrose by weight (not volume), duplicating the carbonation level of a recipe in which you used dextrose, requires that you weigh out the dextrose you used for that recipe, add 25-55%, and use that weight of DME.

Many who use DME for priming do so for the same reason that I switched to using it instead of dextrose - we felt that it is important to keep the beer all-malt. I've heard some brewers say that DME gives finer carbonation (smaller bubbles) than corn sugar, but I have not verified this phenomenon.

Dextrose is easier to use and store once the package has been opened. I have found that when the humidity is higher than about 35%, open packages of DME quickly harden and eventually turn into something resembling brown glass. I have yet to see dextrose harden; it may clump a bit, but never harden to unusability.

Both DME and dextrose must be sanitized before use. DME foams up much more than dextrose when boiled in the priming solution. DME seems to take a bit longer to carbonate than does dextrose. Some home brewers are concerned that using dextrose for priming will give their beers cidery flavors, but the small amount of dextrose used for priming will not perceptably alter the beer's flavor.

When I switched to DME for priming, I encountered what I thought was an infection. After a few weeks in the bottle, a thin, oil-like layer would form right at the level of the beer in the neck of the bottle. I assumed it was some kind of aerobic microbiota like sherry flor yeast or Acetobacter. I have confirmed with further experimentation that it was actually protein from my DME priming solution. When I switched back to dextrose for priming, the problem went away. Therefore, if you want to use DME for priming, I suggest force-chilling the priming solution so that the protein (cold break) forms and settles. This cold trub can be left behind to avoid adding it to the beer. This process points up one more advantage of using dextrose for priming: dextrose has no protein and therefore no hot or cold break.

As you can see, from my perspective dextrose seems to be more favorable for priming than DME.

[Frothy]

I haven't had any problems with regular sugar for priming, but I always use glucose for growing my yeast starters because I really don't want to risk adding any flavours.
I use apple juice for priming cider bottles.

With regards to the sugar industry
I find it crazy that in the states the corn (sweet corn) industry is so heavily subsodised that it is cheaper for them to extract the starch, hydrolise it into glucose and then adjust it with enzymes into glucose-fructose syrup rather than use the cane sugar that is sitting on their doorstep. As I'm sure most mashers know:

starch= glucose polymer
maltose= glucose+ glucose disaccharide
sucrose (table sugar) = glucose+fructose disaccharide (fructose is sweeter)
glucose= primary respiratory sugar of most living things

Sugar is so cheap..... did you know that it's up to 20x cheaper for soft drinks/ squash companies to sweeten their drinks with artificial sweeteners? The ultimate marketing ploy I think.

Sorry rant over, I've been at the turbo cider

Matt
P.S. mysterio pasteurisation at even 75oc is only for 2 minutes

[mysterio]

Thanks for picking that up

[hairytoes]

@ DaaB > If bottling its worth bearing in mind that beer matures better in volume so after primary fermentation it’s a good idea to use secondary fermenter for at least a week, this will not only produce a better beer but also reduce the sediment in the bottle making pouring a little easier.

I have one fermenter which can fit an airlock in the top, I also have a fermenter with a cracked lid off a mate who jacked the hobby in. I was going to fit a tap to both bins & use the one with the broken lid as my bottling bin, with a syphon & bottling thingy on the end of it.

As I will be bottling, I am a bit concerned with the above advice of fermenting again. Will I decant the 1st lot into my bottling bin (without the priming sugar), have the 1st bin cleaned out & then decant it all back into the 1st bin to ferment again?

I suppose I could try to locate a new lid for my bin, but as I'm new to the game & scottish I want to spend as little as possible, as I've already spent quite a bit already.

Said it before, but great site - a real godsend for newbies, I've got a book on selfsufficieny which got me into brewing & it's from 1821 - so you must know how helpful this is!! :rolleyes:

by the way I'm going for the spraymalt - but don't ask me why, liked the sound of it - but I will try the sugar just to compare.

[IanRMartin]

QUOTE (hairytoes @ Jul 31 2006, 08:03 PM)I suppose I could try to locate a new lid for my bin, but as I'm new to the game & scottish    I want to spend as little as possible, as I've already spent quite a bit already.

Check this out use this link then click search for 1276.
http://www.art-of-brewing.co.uk/acatalog/intro.html
they are only £1.69!
It would obviously work out expensive with P&P if thats all you ordered but if you were ordering a few other bits then they are a bargin.

Ian