Wheeler and Sugar...

calumscott · Oct 18, 2012

I've been trawling through Wheeler to try to work out what to brew first when my grain bags arrive and, living in West Ox and having a bit of a soft spot for it, Hooky Bitter seems to fit the bill.

What I noticed though is that a hell of a lot of his recipes use sugar.

Now this is most likely down to my total lack of any experience with AG brewing and recipes but this strikes me as odd. I've been happily aiming to get sugar OUT of my kit brewing with the exception of the priming load.

It seems accepted that the cleanest sugars (e.g dextrose) will do nothing but increase the ABV and thereby decrease mouthfeel, flavour and body.

There is also a fair body of opinion that sucrose can add a "winey" note and candi can give the lovely ester-y notes so prevalent in belgians.

I guess what I really want to know is: What is it that Wheeler is acheiving in these recipes with the addition of "white sugar"? And does one assume "white sugar" to be dextrose just for ABV or sucrose to add those winey notes?

One things for sure, I have realised that the REAL learning about brewing is not sanitation and yeast husbandry, its flavour profiling and recipe building!!!

graysalchemy · Oct 18, 2012

I usually drop it and make up the gravity with pale malt. The only thing is if you do high gravity beers you may end up with to much unfermentables so sugar is a better idea. Having said that I have done a 9% (by accident) heavy which was all malt and to me it doesn't seem cloyingly sweet.

calumscott · Oct 18, 2012

Thanks Alistair.

So do you just bang it into beersmith and jimmy the pale malt % until you get the same OG?

Aleman · Oct 18, 2012

Graham says that it is to make up for the discrepancies that exist when you look at the grain bill, and the Original and Final Gravities . . . Breweries do not like to admit using 'sugar' and generally this is the reason why he has had to add sugar.

Yes you can replace it with pale malt but often you won't achieve the FG from the stated OG, unless you adopt complex step mashing schedules. . . . Of course if you don't actually want to clone the beer exactly as the brewer makes it then it doesn't really matter does it :whistle:

calumscott · Oct 18, 2012

Aleman said:
Graham says that it is to make up for the discrepancies that exist when you look at the grain bill, and the Original and Final Gravities . . . Breweries do not like to admit using 'sugar' and generally this is the reason why he has had to add sugar.

Ah! I see... (and clearly I missed that bit when skimming through the start of the book...

)

Aleman said:
Yes you can replace it with pale malt but often you won't achieve the FG from the stated OG, unless you adopt complex step mashing schedules. . . .

So worth keeping an eye on both OG and FG when monkeying with the numbers then to get something that isn't too complex but should come out about the same...

Aleman said:
Of course if you don't actually want to clone the beer exactly as the brewer makes it then it doesn't really matter does it :whistle:

And that there is the point! I love hooky and if I brewed not an absolute clone but something sort of similar then I'd be tickled pink. So to speak.

Aleman · Oct 18, 2012

calumscott said:
Aleman said:

Of course if you don't actually want to clone the beer exactly as the brewer makes it then it doesn't really matter does it :whistle:

Click to expand...

And that there is the point! I love hooky and if I brewed not an absolute clone but something sort of similar then I'd be tickled pink. So to speak.

As long as you are talking about 'low' gravity beers like bitters, then you are fairly safe replacing the 'small' amount of plain sugar with pale malt, as you are not going to make a massive difference. The issue comes when you are replacing darker sugars which have a flavor component, then it becomes difficult to replicate those flavors with malt.