Oh no back to bloody sugar again.
That's a good point ...Oh no back to bloody sugar again.
Not you as well drooling on about sugar, you need to refine your replies.That's a good point ...
You know what they might use to "clarify" the sugar cane juice ahead of refining ...
If they were feeling flush, they might have used egg whites (a heck of a lot of them!). Fortunately, sugar these days sugar can be considered "vegetarian", maybe even "vegan"?
Thay's a bit of a downer! I hadn't thought that they might be as cryptic as to only use the abbreviation to indicate a manufacturer. It could have been the norm if they only used one product from them.Those are most likely abbreviations for company names. At that time they may have produced sugar products used in brewing:
These are best guesses:
PEX - Alcohol & Sugar Industry - Industrial Applications - Pexgol
CWA - Home | Nestlé Central & West Africa
DS - Welcome to DS Sugars
SLS - no longer in the sugar business?
Fermax - no longer in the sugar business?
- A modernized boiling house combination of falling film evaporators, Vertical continues pan for A, B, C R1 and R2 Massecute boiling with Melt clarification system.
Wrong!Not you as well drooling on about sugar, you need to refine your replies.
Thay's a bit of a downer! I hadn't thought that they might be as cryptic as to only use the abbreviation to indicate a manufacturer. It could have been the norm if they only used one product from them.
Pexgol made products that could be used by the sugar industry. Pexgol aren't part of the sugar industry, but DS Sugars certainly is!
And at the moment the list of abbreviations is just those five in that Blog post: There's an avalanche of abbreviations waiting in the wings.
Talking of DS Sugars, you know when you've spent too long mucking about with this subject when:
... starts to mean something to you
Oh no. Not again?... Careful there you might hurt yourself.
That link sent me down a mashing enzyme education session. Thanks.I like the idea of getting the malt to create the glucose for you but I have not tried it yet. The information is in the other mash enzymes section.
https://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php/The_Theory_of_Mashing#Glucanase
I wonder if you could use some malt extract instead of two mashes to speed things up.
You mean to skip the the first step? Should work. You could use something with a very high enzymatic activity like chit malt. Pilsner or wheat should also work. With chit, about 20% of the grist that would have created the extract should be sufficient.I like the idea of getting the malt to create the glucose for you but I have not tried it yet. The information is in the other mash enzymes section.
https://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php/The_Theory_of_Mashing#Glucanase
I wonder if you could use some malt extract instead of two mashes to speed things up.
Instead of doing a saccharification rest and cooling that wort, use malt extract as the source of maltose and mash in at the cooler 95F temp.You mean to skip the the first step? Should work. You could use something with a very high enzymatic activity like chit malt. Pilsner or wheat should also work. With chit, about 20% of the grist that would have created the extract should be sufficient.
I used 30% Pilsner, rest unmalted wheat in one beer I've made. Converted fine within 1 hour. Chit malt should have almost double the enzymes as pilsner has, so way less should be necessary. Also, we only want the beta activity in this case and beta is really fast once the starch is gelatenized and available for being chopped down. As we already have only sugars from the extract, it should be done in about twenty minutes or so I guess.Instead of doing a saccharification rest and cooling that wort, use malt extract as the source of maltose and mash in at the cooler 95F temp.
If you were doing multiple beers you could use wort from an earlier different batch too or even same rubbing in the fridge.
The link mentions using half the grain bill to get 40% glucose but that seems a bit much.
The title of this immensely long thread is "English Ales; What's Your Favorite Recipe". But we're wandering off a touch from anything I recognise as "English"! (Or "British" - here in Wales we're a tad sensitive to being assumed to be "English"). @DuncB was remaining on track mentioning a historical method of "inverting" sugar, although I personally can't see the point of "inverting".
So ... why is everyone "inverting" sugar? Flavour? Or something else?
Some here will know (from elsewhere) I'm a little "opinionated" about early brewing sugars, but I also like to hear other ideas. I promise not to rant at any answers ... well not too much! I honestly can't taste the difference between inverted sugar used in beer and un-inverted sugar used in beer.
Corn sugar is getting expensive, making invert cuts that price in half. I make it in a pressure canner so it is thin and sterile and can be add directly to the fermentor.So ... why is everyone "inverting" sugar? Flavour? Or something else?
Matter of "taste". Why do you add sugar to "Belgian" style beers? And this topic (somewhere back in time when it started) is titled "English Ales: What's Your Favorite Recipe" and as many English (British!) beers contained sugar, a copy is going to have to contain sugar.Why do you add sugar to your British beers ...
A commonly quoted reason for using sugar is to "thin" a potentially heavy beer. But as I've this (active) chart staring me in the face on this computer:
View attachment 836668
A "Rose" (from up north England) "1896 'AK' " (one of my favorities? Well, I've done it more then once). 9-10% sugars, yet that end gravity of 1.019 (it'll go down 2 or 3 points yet) can hardly be called "thin". The other big change (in only the last 10 years) is we have these "heritage" malts available to use now, "Chavallier", "Plumage Archer", even special edition "Maris Otter" (in use from 1975) that have been malted similar to methods used before 1980. And they finish at high gravities. As would be "normal" for earlier British beers.
Without the sugar this would have been finishing in the twenties (I was mashing slightly lower as well, at 65°C). The yeast helps too (for a higher gravity), this one being a low attenuative "Yorkshire" yeast: A particularily heavy cropping yeast which has been giving the (common style) "Tilt" hydrometer creating the above trace a very bumpy ride.
You don't think they would stop using sugar if they knew what you do?Each to their own I make Landlord and Sussex without any sugar and they taste good.
Nay! The yeast is perfectly capable of dealing with sucrose. @DuncB posted something on yeast being used to "invert" sugar (English Ales - What's your favorite recipe?). But glucose is supposed to have some influence on "esters" - not that I can tell - but that Rose AK recipe calls for "white sugar" (unusual ingredient for 19th C.) so I replaced it with corn sugar (which they certainly did use in brewing later in the 19th C.). The replacement was purely a whim of mine ... no evidence for it.Would the yeast poop out resulting in an even higher FG if the sugar weren't inverted first or does it even matter? Might depend on yeast strain... (not suggesting that you have or have not used invert)
Nay! The yeast is perfectly capable of dealing with sucrose. @DuncB posted something on yeast being used to "invert" sugar (English Ales - What's your favorite recipe?). But glucose is supposed to have some influence on "esters" - not that I can tell - but that Rose AK recipe calls for "white sugar" (unusual ingredient for 19th C.) so I replaced it with corn sugar (which they certainly did use in brewing later in the 19th C.). The replacement was purely a whim of mine ... no evidence for it.
If I remember rightly, the yeast releases "invertase" externally to deal with sucrose, and so sucrose is consumed before the maltose in the wort. The yeast splits maltose internally (into glucose).
The other sugar in the Rose AK recipe is "Brewers' Invert Sugar No.2" for which I did use one of my (infamous?) emulations (no inversion and no caramelisation). But I'm not to talk of that or I may start a bun fight!
Malt is a polysaccharide. Made of many sugars joined together. Some yeasts have enzymes that can chop that polysaccharide up into fully metabolisable pieces, ie a saison yeast.Why do some yeast finish at a higher gravity than others?
I've seen one suggestion that it may disadvantage yeast cropping down the generations? But I don't repeatedly repitch my yeast anyway. I reckon "inverting" was a handy way to break into the sugar refining chain and have a product in handy syrup form rather than a crystalising mess. More "reasons" for inverting was invented at a later date ("hind-sight").That's interesting, so inverting the sucrose doesn't stress the yeast affecting the further processing of the remaining sucrose and maltose in the wort? Just out of curiosity then what is the mechanism by which a yeast stops processing sugars? Why do some yeast finish at a higher gravity than others?
Good for you I don’t use sugar in my British beers your choice my choice.You don't think they would stop using sugar if they knew what you do?
Sugar is used for many reasons and I brew most beers with sugar for more reasons than authenticity. I've learned a lot from trying different methods of brewing and in other disciplines.
For a lot of years, most breweries in Britain were designed to brew with sugar as a major ingredient.
So you make alcohol free beer?Good for you I don’t use sugar in my British beers your choice my choice.
He's back!Brewing is about one thing, fundamentally; producing alcohol. That's what brewers do. They produce alcoholic beverages. Beer. Adding sugar boosts alcohol production with minimal effort in the brewery. Although once a highly valued commodity, when first imported to Europe from Asia, and far too expensive to use in brewing, cane sugar production increased (prices went down) due to slavery. Then supplies further increased (prices got even cheaper) for Britain exclusively, in Europe, because the British navy blockaded supplies to the rest of Europe during the Napoleonic wars. "Ahoy, what shall we do with all this surplus sweet stuff, you bilge-sucking scallywags?" So supplies increased dramatically for British brewers and others. "Sink me, you scurvy dogs!" It worked surprisingly well. It boosted the alcohol content and added a luscious character that complemented English ales at the time. That's all it was, primarily. No need to complicate life. Just a fortuitous discovery by chance events really.
At some point, using invert (monosaccharide) additions became the thing to do. Actually for quite obvious reasons as it transpired back then, not just today. It's documented in the literature from the 19th and early 20th century. It's not just a 'cheat' attenuation booster, to produce more ethanol, it's a fermentation (yeast) aid. Adding 10-30% fermentables as sucrose (a disaccharide), on top of the approximately 5% from grain, adds a significant biological burden (stress) on yeast cells, and risks a classic home brew 'twang'. They actually need to do some work (biochemistry) to process it. They can't break the laws of physics. Do the biology, trying not to assume - like so many brewers do - that yeast cells are just tiny little particles converting sugar to ethanol and CO2. It's a little bit more complicated than that. Biology, that is. Anyway, invert (monosaccahride) is much easier to process therefore requires much less work by the yeast cells. Not that anyone needs to know about it. You don't. But the fact is, British brewers in the 19th clearly realised, quite fortuitously, that adding cane invert to brewery worts was beneficial in terms of increasing attenuation and adding subtle flavour characteristics reflecting elements of already established tastes based on widely used cane sugar. It was documented in their publications.
If we use refined sugar (sucrose, from cane, beet or whatever - it's all the same thing, sucrose), it imparts practically zero flavour. It's essentially pure sucrose. If we use invert from refined sugar, again, it imparts practically zero flavour. But you'll get a better fermentation, a beer that conditions sooner and yeast that are better for repitching. Think about it, from the perspective of a brewer. It's why so many breweries, including big macros, use monosaccharide additions in one form or another today. It's standard practice in many breweries. Purist all-grain home brewers have simply been in denial about the benefits of sugar additions. Ironic really, because all all-grain fermentable sugars in wort end up as a form of the monosaccharide glucose. More biology.
So where does the 'legendary' luscious character come from? Cane molasses, of course. Added by using unrefined cane sugar in the first place and/or adding cane molasses to invert made from refined or unrefined sucrose. More molasses produces more flavour. Taste some. It's not rocket science. It's what the last remaining UK-based manufacturer of British brewing inverts does, which has been detailed sufficiently already and interpreted to varying degrees of accuracy by a number of home brewers for years. There's nothing new to see here. It's all old hat.
Summary: Inverted sucrose (cane, beet or whatever, in reality) boosts attenuation (alcohol production), helps promote a better fermentation, a beer that conditions sooner and yeast that are better for repitching. Adding cane molasses adds a lusciousness that complements the subtle complexities of traditional English ales.
It's only beer. It's not supposed to be complicated. Why some need to complicate the world only they know.
I'm not sure about the procedures used when baking (or simmering) for extended times, to be honest. You'd have already inverted the coconut sucrose before baking. I'd have just added some cane molasses instead of heating for an hour or two or more. Something I had in my mind, but forget to add above, molasses are very nutritious, which is why yeast are cultured on the stuff commercially. Just adding invert (or sucrose) is like adding empty calories for the yeast. Another good reason to add molasses rather than heat for ages, in my mind.Welcome back @McMullan I missed your help.
Just inverting some coconut sugar.
Do I neutralise the acid before the long oven stage. I've simmered with citric for an hour.
Welcome back @McMullan I missed your help.
Just inverting some coconut sugar.
Do I neutralise the acid before the long oven stage. I've simmered with citric for an hour.
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