Cane (beet) sugar

[bigbanko]

Hello all

I am currently gathering all the nessecary equipement to atempt my first all grain brew and keg set up. I have been K&K brewing and bottling for a couple of years now.
After looking through some beer recipies from Beersmith and the like, I notice some have Cane (beet) sugar as an ingreedient in various quantities from a hundred grams to a kilo.
Is this sugar there for the tastse or purly to increase the alc content.
I am also assuming this is just plain old white suger or are they refering to something else.

I am considering a Pale Ale recipie which calls for the following ingredience.

3.00 kg Pale Malt, Traditional Ale (Joe White)
0.10 kg Wheat Malt, Malt Craft (Joe White)
0.02 kg Crystal, Dark (Joe White)
25.00 gm Pride of Ringwood [10.00%] (60 min)
1.00 items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 min)
0.65 kg Cane (Beet) Sugar
1 Pkgs Coopers Pale Ale (Coopers Bottle) [Starter 1000 ml] Yeast-Ale

Cheers

[Ed]

bigbanko, I think? the following is true:

Beet sugar is from the root of the beet plant and cane sugar is from sugar cane. Maybe they are just grouped together like that because they might have similar properties. I think some of the Belgian breweries use beet sugar in their brews.

A reason for using sugar in homebrewing is to boost alc/vol with little extra expense, but it's usually done with recipes that are going to have a high starting gravity. Another reason is that getting to high gravity from all malt will produce a very heavy beer, but adding sugar will give the extra gravity without adding additional body. So it's use is associated with beers where a high alc/vol but light body is desired.

I'd consider the recipe you have there would be better suited to be all malt simply because it's not going to be a high alc beer. I think using sugars is OK when going over say 1.050 OG from malt and then I'd use it at about a 10 to 15% contribution to total points. If the proportion of sugar point to malt points is too high, it is said to give a cidery flavour to the brew. What I do is make candy sugar which works really well. It also contributes flavour. If I didn't use candy sugar, I'd probably go with dex instead of white sugar, but some reckon white sugar is OK.

Cheers, Ed

[Ross]

Ed,

That recipe is a coopers pale ale clone & the beer reportedly has 20% sugar in it's girst.

Other than that, i agree totally with your comments .

cheers Ross

[geoffclifton]

Low ABV ???

I'd consider the recipe you have there would be better suited to be all malt simply because it's not going to be a high alc beer.

That recipe has 3.1Kg malt and 650g sugar. Brewers Calc brings up 6.8% unless of course it's a double batch but even then 3.7% ain't exactly low.

Am I missing something?

Cheers, Geoff.

[Ed]

Ed,

That recipe is a coopers pale ale clone & the beer reportedly has 20% sugar in it's girst.

Other than that, i agree totally with your comments .

cheers Ross

Suspected it was an Aussie beer clone, the malt, POR, and sugar gives the clues.

Low ABV ???
..........That recipe has 3.1Kg malt and 650g sugar. Brewers Calc brings up 6.8% unless of course it's a double batch but even then 3.7% ain't exactly low.

Am I missing something?

Cheers, Geoff.

Yep missing something Geoff. The post is in the all grain section. You'd need to run your calcs to take into consideration the sugars are being extracted from malted barley and not obtained from concentrated malt extract. And you'd need to know approx mash and system efficiencies to work it out.

I do take issue with 3.7% not being low in alcohol (not that this particular recipe would be). At what point would you consider a beer low alc? 3.5% beers for comps would be entered in "reduced alcohol" type sections. That's not far of 3.7%, and no-one would even pick it.

Most brewers I talk to make their beers around 4.5 to 5.5% as standard type drinks. Super brews are much higher again. Maybe we're just all drunks

Cheers, Ed

[bigbanko]

Thanks for the info guys.

[geoffclifton]

Thanks Ed.

I need to learn the diff between pale malt and plae malt EXTRACT.

Cheers, Geoff.

[JubJub]

Good to see I'm not the only one targeting 4.5 %.

Jub.

[beernut]

I'm trying to see how low i can go while still keeping a full malt flavour.
Down to 4.3 ABV on my Pils and still tastes great.
Now I can drink more.

[rwh]

I just did a Coopers Mild clone. Should be around 3.5%. I'll let you know about the taste. I've done a light beer in the past too (2.5%), and you can definitely tell that it's a light. Having said that, you can tell most commercial lights are light... right!