Brewferm Grand Cru finishing sugar

[kodak79]

I've always used normal cane sugar when brewing and priming the Brewferm Grand Cru but am wondering if anyone has tried different types of priming sugar to do a taste comparison? If so what are your thoughts on the outcome?
On another note, has anyone done this beer and kegged to a cornie? I was wondering if it's possible to reduce to massive maturation time required? All of the other beers I've done thus far in the corny are good to drink straight away rather than waiting another 2 weeks in the warm for 2nd fermentation/priming and 3 week conditioning in the cool.
Cheers,
Chris

 

[kodak79]

Anyone? Anything? I know it's a bit specific but was hoping that someone might have done it before.

 

[Simonh82]

The small amount of sugar you use for carbonation will probably make very little flavour impact unless you use a very strong dark sugar like molasses or treacle.
If you keg I'm sure you could start drinking it fairly quickly but for an 8% beer it would do better with a few weeks of conditioning. Strong beers benefit from a bit of aging.

 

[ACBEV]

I always use demerara sugar for priming, no matter what beer it is. Taste difference is subtle at best.

 

[Slid]

Anyone? Anything? I know it's a bit specific but was hoping that someone might have done it before.

Basically lots of people, me included, have, over the years tried priming with other than table sugar. None of them made any real positive difference to the final outcome.

 

[bomberns127]

i have made grand cru a few times, always with basic white sugar and always mainly in 1/2 pint bottles, strong beer needs a long maturation time in the bottles, 18 months in the bottle and its amazing, never thought of using anything other than basic white sugar for fermenting and bottling, have drunk homebrew conditioned with brown sugar, i think it doesnt help the clean taste of a beer, putting grand cru in a cornie? bloody hell! that much 8% ale at the push of a button? dangerous lmao

 

[kodak79]

Thanks everyone. In reading all of these responses I remembered that I once tried an experiment on this myself, using cane sugar for some and DME for some......and here was no difference. I think it was just because the instructions said about using different sugars to finish giving different final flavours. I'll guess I'll stick with cane sugar.
Thanks also for the thoughts on the maturation and using the cornie. I stopped brewing for a while because I was so busy with my business and bottling took so long, until mate got me back into it using cornies. I've just gotten lazy on bottling,

 

[kodak79]

and bottling stops me getting the next brew on for an additional 2 weeks!

 

[chthon]

The problem with brown sugar (apart from the origins: there seems to be a difference between Dutch and Belgian brown sugar, what it is available in UK?) is that it always contains molasses. And my experience is that when the beer is too attenuated, the molasses gives it a bite.