what sugar is best to use

by **Surfer** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 3:12 am

Just wondering what sugar is best to use, i have heard dextros is preferable but it is not allways easy to obtain in large amounts around here and white sugar is cheaper, any thoughts.

Mark

by **Phantom** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 3:56 am

Bingo! you\'ve got it in one.
Dextrose is a commercial name for glucose. Yes, it\'s alledged to brew cleaner. Downside is that it\'s only 80% as sweet as table sugar and you\'d probably have to have a commercial account with a supplier to get it in 25kg bags.
There\'s also still a bit of a

about whether it\'s better to use cane sugar or beet sugar. Well, I\'m undecided, but if it\'s British Sugar/Silver spoon it\'s beet, if it\'s Tate & Lyle or Whitworths it\'s cane.
Oh and it just happens that it\'s cheaper to get 5kg bags of whitworths from the local tesco for me (between 3 and 10 pence a kilo cheaper).

by **Surfer** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 4:00 am

Thanks, we only have cane sugar in OZ and it\'s fairly cheap i\'ll start using that.

by **Jimmy** » Tue Mar 24, 2009 1:33 am

This is one of those loaded questions - it all depends on your definition of best!
If you want more product for less price, then the cheapest is best and that is usually bog standard white sugar.
If you want the maximum performance per batch, then dextrose is supposed to be better but costs more, and I have heard that the extra performance doesn\'t compensate for the cost but not tried it myself.
If you want a different flavour, then the best might be entirely different. For example, Tequila relies on the inulin sugars found in the agave plant, and isn\'t proper unless those sugars are used (if I remember rightly, it can still be called Tequila if it has no more than 50% white sugar added, but can\'t be called 100% agave, obviously).
Horses for courses, my standard answer to pretty much every question!

by **umpa** » Tue Mar 24, 2009 8:05 pm

I do like phantom does & go to tescos and grab a 5kg bag of white sugar. As i\'m still a noob at this game I use essences mainly and the cheepest is best for me. I also distill my home brew beer when it don\'t work right and that makes whiskey.

by **Phantom** » Wed Mar 25, 2009 4:05 am

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then dextrose is supposed to be better but costs more

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It\'s also harder to get. One of the reasons being that it\'s been a regular, in the past, for cutting class A substances (various).
Hence my comment about commercial accounts earlier. There\'s a local bloke who can supply me with 25 kg bags of "anhydrous dextrose" but he needs a "letter head" so that they have some sort of accountability/tracability, if the "pointy heads" happen to come calling.
If you look at the home brew shop prices, lot\'s of them charge between Â£1.50 and Â£2.00 per kilo (don\'t forget, it\'s sometimes listed as "brewing sugar", or "corn sugar" or just dextrose. The bloke up the road (he\'s actually a pharmaceutical supplier) says that he can do it for between 90p and Â£1.00 a kilo in 25 kg bags.
given that it\'s 80% as sweet as table sugar, if the wash needs 6kg of table sugar, then you\'ll be using between 7 and 7.5 kg per 25 litre batch.
the 70-75p per kg of the 5kg bags of table sugar (whitworths, so it\'s cane sugar) beats that hands down! So, having tried it, I\'d say that generally it\'s not worth the effort/hassle/expence

by **umpa** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 5:34 am

are you sure sweetness has an effect ?

I would have thought that you would need less glucose than sugar purly from the fact it is a more a simple carbohydrate than regular sugar and the yeast can work it better.

by **HangOver** » Sat Mar 28, 2009 8:14 pm

maybe I should move back to England, here sugar is about 50p a kilo and two or three times that for dextrose

by **Phantom** » Sat Mar 28, 2009 10:03 pm

are you sure sweetness has an effect ?

I would have thought that you would need less glucose than sugar purly from the fact it is a more a simple carbohydrate than regular sugar and the yeast can work it better.

Yes, you should remember, that table sugar doesn\'t only have glucose in it....there\'s the fructose, sucrose and a few other bits and bobs as well.
If you read the back of a StillSpirits yeast pack, it says something like 6kg of table sugar, but 7kg of dextrose. Actually I found that I ended up using nearly 7.5 kg of dextrose when I tried it, to attain the same starting gravity of wash.

maybe I should move back to England, here sugar is about 50p a kilo and two or three times that for dextrose

You should re-read the prices HangOver, in a 5kg bag, table sugar is working out about 75 to 80p per kilo and the bloke at the pharmaceutical suppliers said that he could do me dextrose in 25kg bags for between Â£1 and Â£1.10 per kg.
Hence I\'d stay where you are and just use table sugar