Main Beer Brewing Ingredients
- Malt
- Hops
- Sugar
- Yeast
- Water
Other Ingredients
Sugar
Cane sugar is used in beer recipes to increase the ,alcohol content
of the beer. White sugar and raw sugar have virtually no effect on the
flavour. Brown sugar, which is used in some recipes, adds a little
colour and flavour. Treacle and golden syrup also are sometimes used.
Personally, I do not think that their flavour is compatible with beer
and I do not recommend their use.
Cane sugar is a chemical combination of two simple sugars. Before
yeast can start to ferment the cane ,sugar, it must split it into the
simple sugars. This process is called inversion.
Yeast is perfectly well
equiped to perform the inversion and it is quite unnecessary for us
to do it.
However, the inversion process can be quite simply done by boiling
the sugar in an acid solution. The product is called invert sugar. This
name comes about because the sugar solution before inversion rotates the
plane of polarized light in one direction and after Inversion rotates it
in the opposite direction.
Some brewers claim that inverting the sugar before adding it to the
wort gives faster fermentation and produces a beer with a better head.
Personally, I am unconvinced. However, the inversion process is simple
and you may like to try it.
Two pounds of sugar may be inverted by boiling for twenty minutes
with one pint of water and one teaspoon of citric acid. An aluminium
saucepan can be used. The mixture should be stirred until it boils and
the sugar dissolves. After that, the heat is turned down and the
solution simmered for the required time. The resulting invert sugar
syrup is light yellow in colour. It should be allowed to cool before
pouring it into a plastic vessel.
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