Malt or sugar

[Luvabeer]

Hi friends
I’m a complete novice an I’ve just acquired a ipa from Wilko I also bought a bag of spray malt 1.1lb. After reading the instructions provided they state 2.2lb brewing sugar.
So question!
Do I need to return to Wilko (fair trek by the way) or can I add normal sugar to make the difference up ? Any advice will be much appreciated
Cheers

 

[terrym]

Most experienced home brewers avoid using large quantities of table sugar in a brew, including me. It's said to introduce a 'cidery' taste to the beer.
So as alternatives to brewing sugar and spray malt, I often use Golden Syrup in beer except for very light beers, so you could use that. Its partially inverted sugar. Supermarket squeezy bottles are fine and better than tins since you can measure it better, plus its cheaper. 500-550g of GS should be OK. You could alternatively add liquid malt from Holland and Barrett at about £2.99 for a 1lb jar unless its on offer for less. I use this too. And if the Wilko kit is only 1.5kg malt I would brew short to 20 litres not 23 litres to concentrate the flavours.

 

[Sandimas]

Malt every time, sugar will give you a very second-best beer. The only time I now use sugar in kits is the Belgian Brewferm kits (which are really high quality), and then it's Golden Syrup not brewing or table sugar.

Having said that, you have 75% malt (kit plus small bag of spraymalt) so you could add sugar. It's up to you, hard to estimate the difference as I've not done that kit.

 

[Bigcol49]

Hi!
+1 for brewing short to get a less "watery" beer.
I would have gone for two bags of the spray malt; I've also used Coopers brew enhancers with good success.
If you are close to a Holland & Barrett, go with the jar of malt extract, as @terrym suggested. They had a penny sale recently, but I don' t know if it's still on.
If not, golden syrup would be your next best option - again, excellent advice from @terrym

 

[Drunkula]

With the B&M IPA I did two batches, one with all spraymalt, one with the sugar. For that kit the sugar was much more like an IPA and kept it hoppy. The all spraymalt version knocked the hops dead and I much preferred the other one. For me I'd try half spraymalt, half sugar.

I'm going to do a "Not a kit and a kilo" experiment soon and do a grain brew but with the equivalent sugar of a kit and a kilo just to see if it makes a just a dry, thin beer, or a noticeably crap beer.

This is worth a read.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/...ng-to-make-it-taste-like-freakin-cider.90498/

 

[The Baron]

I agree with you Drunkula in the case of IPA's too much malt will over power the hops. You can use 50/50 in most cases but again if you are doing lagers too much malt will do the same so I would use brewing sugar in that case, if you are doing bitters and ales the more malt will complement this type of beer, As a beginner you will find which is best for you but adding all malts to basic beginner kits can become expensive in which case you may be better buying premium type 2 can kits which do not require extra malts/sugars. I think brewing sugar is about £2.50 a kilo in wilko and ideal for IPA/lightales/lagers. Once you get the hang of a few brews you will be in a better position to judge what is best for you. But to answer the question I would happily use ordinary sugar in a 50/50 to get you started then use brewing sugar in whatever ratio you deem best for you thereafter

 

[RichK]

H&B for a jar of liquid malt extract or I think Waitrose do a slightly smaller one, if you have a Waitrose nearby (Asda have only recently stopped stocking it ) I regularly use golden syrup in kits & it works OK but only tend to use half a bottle (~300g) at a time. There's nothing stopping you using what you have & brewing a bit shorter still - guessing about 15 - 16L?

 

[phildo79]

When making beginner kits, avoid using table sugar as it will almost certainly give the beer a cider taste, to begin with. I always found that it took an extra week to get rid of that cider taste. However, I don't think there is anything wrong with topping up your spray malt with table sugar to get the desired weight. Personally, I would always go for brewing sugar (dextrose / corn sugar (for our American friends)) when making one of those sort of kits. Never had any issues with dextrose.

 

[hesstondriver]

could someone please explain the golden syrup thing ?

is it just a better fermentable sugar ? or does it contribute to flavour ?

tia

 

[Drunkula]

I'm still not buying into the sucrose causing cider taste until I've seen a triangle test or done one myself. I'm like that.

 

[terrym]

I'm still not buying into the sucrose causing cider taste until I've seen a triangle test or done one myself. I'm like that.

Homebrewing has come along way since a Woolworths' John Bull kit and a kilo of sugar in the 1970s and 1980s. Thank goodness. That's why many people back then tried it, found kits were rubbish and never bothered again. I started my brewing by doing extract brews before kits were invented but when I ran out of time for brewing several years later and tried kits I stopped brewing because the quality of the finished product was dire. Fortunately there's now so much more out there for all home brewers including the use of better adjuncts than table sugar if you do kits. And that's why I have started brewing again after a break of many years.

 

[AdeDunn]

I'm still not buying into the sucrose causing cider taste until I've seen a triangle test or done one myself. I'm like that.

The thing is, I am now 90% certain that not everybody can taste it even, whilst some people are more sensitive to the taste than normal even. I can't even use sucrose to prime with, as I can taste a green apple/cidery taste in the beer if I do, so I use dextrose when I prime. I COULD use dme (I have plenty of it), but it's messy, less effective and costs more, so I save that for making yeast starters. So you may not actually be one of the people who could taste the effects of sucrose on beer even, beyond it producing a dryer beer through higher attenuation. I'm usually like you though, I wan't to see things for myself so to speak, only in this case I did.... It was rank! It was in a Coopers Cerveza, I ran out of carbonation drops (yeah, I'd only just started in the hobby back then), so I did some of the bottles using a small amount of sugar (using a calculator to work out how much to use). The beer with the carb drops was the usual Coopers Cerveza meh, watery and meh, the beer with the sugar was cidery and rank.... That was enough for me to order 9 kilos of dextrose, which I'm still getting through to this day... lol

It's been a while since I did kits (I just didn't get on with them in all honesty), but one of the nicest kits I did make was a dry hopped Wilkos golden ale kit which I made up with 1 kilo of DME (spraymalt) and 500g dextrose. The DME helped the body and flavour. It was literally the only kit beer I enjoyed drinking, been dry hopped with 25g Citra, 25g Amarillo and 25g Falconer's Flight, and fermented with CML US Pale Ale yeast (the one thing I wish I'd used a better US style yeast). It was fruity and easy to drink, and came out at 5.44% ABV approx..... Which wasn't bad for a 1 can kit.

 

[stevey]

could someone please explain the golden syrup thing ?

is it just a better fermentable sugar ? or does it contribute to flavour ?

tia

Golden syrup is inverted sugar, that is sucrose that has been converted to glucose and fructose by heating. Some say it's better to brew with, I've never used it myself though so can't comment on that.

 

[terrym]

I use GS in stouts and some darker ales. The lighter the beer (and not surprisingly the more you use) the more likely you are to notice it, although as a background taste in some beers it is not unpleasant at all, which is why I use it. However I limit myself to 500g for a brews down to about 18 litres and don't use it at all in very light beers.