Very quick question - why add sugar?

[kilgoretrou_t]

Hi all

My second thread/question.

Why does the Coopers Mexican Cerveza kit not come with sugar in it? I made mine with 1kg of sugar. Which is what I was advised to do. No grumbles there.

I looked on Wikipedia to see about beer brewing and it doesn't mention anywhere about adding sugar. From what I can tell the basic method is to add yeast to a malt. The malt itself contains the sugar. So why are we adding sugar?

I am a beginner so forgive the ignorance. I expect the adding of sugar is simply because thats part of the chosen recipe. I havent tried it but presumably beer can be made from just malt+yeast?

Are Coopers selling it like this because they know people add all sorts of types of sugar and stuff to their malt kits? Or cant they add the sugar into the malt in the first place? When it comes to a Mexican Cerveza product, they could easily have 5 versions instead of 1..

Thx
KT

 

[stpug]

The term "malt" generally refers to malted barley grain. I believe (but could be wrong) that you're referring to malt extract.

Plain table sugar is often added to a brew to lighten body, increase alcohol, and help better attenuate a beer. Why none was included might be because it's considered such a common ingredient that it's not worth including???

The malt extract indeed is the bulk of the sugars used in brewing, but you can achieve different end characteristics by using some percentage of plain table sugar in a brew as well.

I can see where a "Mexican Cerveza" kit might benefit from the use of plain sugar.

 

[kilgoretrou_t]

yes i meant Malt Extract. That gooey stuff in the can.

Right, so its just the recipe.


I see from this rather interesting article that Sugar was only recently accepted as an ingredient in German beer production. (as was yeast!)

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

 

[unionrdr]

Adding some sugar is cheaper than adding extract. But it also drys the beer out a bit,which for a cervesa is basically a good thing. Lighter beers like lagers don't have a ton of malt flavoring to them like ales generally.

 

[Schol-R-LEA]

To be a bit more precise, the sugar is a substitute for the adjuncts which would normally be used to lighten beers in this style. These adjuncts, most commonly flaked corn or rice, add fermentable sugar to the beer, but have to be mashed in order to convert the starches to sugars. In an extract beer, the mashing has already been done for you, and the malt extract no longer has the enzymes needed to convert the adjuncts*, so you use the refined sugar to get the same result.

For an example of a beer that uses adjuncts, see the well-known Cream of Three Crops Cream Ale. Cream ales were originally introduced to compete with light lagers**, so they also use adjuncts to lighten the beer's body. It's an all-grain recipe, so you wouldn't be in a position to brew it yourself yet, but it should give you an idea of what an adjunct beer is like.

*There are malt extracts which have the enzymes still in them, called diastatic malt extract, but these are both expensive and hard to come by.

** If you read the comments, you'll see the term 'BMC' bandied about quite a bit. It stands for 'Budweiser-Miller-Coors', the most common beers in the US and the (low) bar by which many non-craft drinkers judge beers. It is not usually used in as positive a light except when trying to make a lighter beer

 

[bethebrew]

The only time I feel the need to go with sugar is to make some candy syrup with some C&H Cane Sugar to add to a big Belgian. There the percentages of sugar go up, but that's the style. And they taste quite good. But raw white sugar, not so good. A little molasses but only the good organic kind (sorry Brer Rabbit yuck) like 2 oz for 5 gallons can add a nice touch if to style.

Otherwise, even for bottling "sugar", I stick with malts.

 

[causeimthesquid]

Sounds like one of those old "Kit and a Kilo" sets. It may just be an old extract brew kit/recipe. Knowledge regarding extract brewing has come a long way since kits like those were assembled.

It was left out because it is an easy ingredient to get at the grocery store. It is included as an ingredient because it is a cheap way to increase alcohol content. It also leads to better attenuation, which covers up for old yeast and non-fermentables in cheap extracts.

 

[unionrdr]

Now if I could just find a PM recipe for Little Kings cream ale...