Outdated Brewing Information

There is a problem with trusting brewing information online, even if it comes from experienced brewers…

… it may be outdated…

… I am currently on vacation in Pensacola, FL and met a home brewer who attempted to brew years back – probably before I was even born…

He said he tried a couple batches, but abandoned the hobby being that his beers came out a bit cidery…

I read about how simple sugars can produce this flavor and it kept me from using simple sugars in my beers…

… but then I understood two things…

First… and this is more of a guess since I wasn’t alive back then.. it appears that the extracts sold in the 70’s, 80’s was of lower quality than the ones being sold now… yeast appears to have also improved as far as viability…

The second thing was that, the main reason why you get that cidery flavor is from lack of nutrients in the sugar…

There are kits being sold that still instruct you to add simple sugar… I personally don’t like these kits and wouldn’t recommend them to anyone…

It’s recommended to add dry malt extract instead of sugar to these kits…

But that doesn’t mean you should stay away from using sugar in your beers…

That’s how Belgians beers are brewed…

But there is a difference between using sugar in a beer brewed with grains where you can select grains with more protein to increase the level of nutrients as opposed to adding sugar to a kit which may not have the needed amount of nutrients to counteract the lack of nutrients from the sugar being added…

These are little details that start to make a difference in your brewing when you venture out to brew some advanced styles…

One way you can add sugar when you think you may lack nutrients in the wort is to add it after the initial phase of fermentation when yeast use up the nutrients… this allows the yeast to grow and become active and adding the sugar after this won’t affect the beer as much… however, the problem should be solved at the root…

You should plan ahead and make sure that you’ll have the nutrients needed to brew the beer if you are adding adjuncts like sugar…

Cheers!