Alternatives to Lactose

[corks]

Planning a somewhat sweet lemonade as for non-beer drinker guests (read chicks), but a few of my mates are lactose-intolerant. So are there other alternatives? I was thinking light malt, but I'm not sure what that'll do to the lemonade...

[blandy]

I was thinking of doing this with my quince cider, as my father is lactose intolerant. The guy at Grain & Grape said I could use Aspartame, but he did not recommend it.

Maybe you could go to a health food shop and try to find some sort of unfermentable sweetener.

[Pale_Ale]

You could put artificial sweetner in. Side effect is the diet coke taste. Not highly recommended but few alternatives.

I'd personally just use some ldm

[sanka32]

I had the same dilemma making a Cider without lactose, I ended up using a lot of corn sugar.
It didn't come out very sweet, but certainly wasn't as dry as I expected.

I've been thinking of testing out 'Splenda' sweetener which is sucralose, still technically sugar but modified in some way - would this be fermentable?

From googling, the other option is extract of the 'Stevia' plant which is apparently very sweet, but may be hard to get hold of?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevia


Steve.

[rwh]

I've seen Splenda recommended on here before, so I don't think it's fermenable.

[Ash]

http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/phpBB2 ... 5e6dce37a1

have a read there, you could add some in at the end to sweeten or apparently it can partially ferment (the maltodextrin part) but really I dunno.

YMMV & all that

[Pale_Ale]

Sucralose is not fermentable.

I've never used Splenda tablets but on the assumption that one tablet is equal to one teaspoon of sugar (5g), you could figure out how many you needed and just drop them in at any stage. I'd dissolve them in hot water and add them when bulk priming.

[atropine]

I made the brigalow apple cider , and I was reading before hand how some people found it wasn't sweet enough so I added 2 spenda (sucralose) tablets per 750ml bottle when bottling for 1/2 of the bottles.

It did sweeten and didn't impart any bad flavours, but I didn't' add enough tablets. Nothing wrong with the splenda but I guess adding the equivalent of 2 tea spoons of sugar per 750ml bottle never really was going to have much of an effect.

[corks]

so where would one get a hold of such a product? do most HB stores stock it, or is it a grain and grape job?

[Ash]

Splenda is a run of the mill artifical sweetner (except it tastes way closer to sugar than the Nutrasweet in Diet Coke) usually available in supermarkets, though seeing you're in Ecuador I have no idea how available it would be there?

[corks]

well, not much in the way of brewing supplies is available here, im inclined to believe it's ilegal here.
but im back to aus in 13 days, so it's all good.

[Chris]

Stevia. Natural, and tastes ok.

[blandy]

Stevia. Natural, and tastes ok.

I was just about to post this suggestion. I asked a guy who used to work at a health food store, he reccommended this, but I think the "ok" should be emphacised. Anything other than lactose won't be the same.

[Chris]

I was going to put "fine," but intentionally chose "OK"

[rwh]

I checked out Splenda (sucralose) in the supermarket the other night, intended to use it in my cider (which is intended to be palatable by my lactose and gluten intolerant housemate).

There are two forms: tablet and powder. The first ingredient of the tablet form is lactose. The powder form is amazingly light, and is 1.5% or so splenda. Its first ingredient is maltodextrin(!) It's also something like $8.50 for 250g.

So forget it. Maybe if you could get it in pure form it'd be worth considering.

[Pale_Ale]

That's surprising rwh. as lactose contains calories does it not? Funny that it is the biggest ingredient in Splenda!

What about some of the other tablets? they are not all the same. You can also buy Sacharrin tablets I believe.

[rwh]

I didn't look at any of the other artificial sweeteners, because I'd heard the best things about Splenda I guess. The others I suspect will taste too artificial.

The lactose will be in the tablets for the same reason it's in most medications: to help bind the tablet together. I'd imagine the quantity would be pretty small, as a single little tablet is equivalent to a teaspoon of sugar.

When I bottle my cider (it's been in primary three weeks, so soon), I'll do half with lactose+dextrose, the other half with just dextrose. The housemate's going to have to be content with dry cider.

[drsmurto]

Could get your housemate some sparkling apple juice to add to a glass of cider to add some sweetness and not changing the flavour a huge amount......

[rwh]

That's not a bad idea... though she can buy it, dammit... I've done enough!