Corn syrup

Anyone out there use corn syrup? What in? Any good?

You don’t mean Karo do you?  If so, dont do it.

Yeah, Karo has stuff other than corn syrup in it, avoid that.  You can get brewers corn syrup.  My LHBS has it (also in 5 gal pails!) Here:  https://www.grapeandgranary.com/corn-syrup-25-lb-jar.html

No.

That’s what I’m talkin’ about.

Have you brewed with it? If so, what were your results?

I haven’t brewed with it – yet.  Keep meaning to in an American style but I always seem to just use flaked maize.  Might finally make it into the Schlitz clone Denny set me on the path to, when I finally do that.  All I know is the LHBS has sold it for years, so somebody  must like it.  It is at least a real brewing ingredient.

I wonder if corn syrup (the stuff without additives) can be added to bottles for bottle conditioned beer?  And if so, how many mL should be injected per 12 Oz. bottle (as a nominal ‘ballpark’ quantity, foregoing the proper need to compute remaining CO2 volumes, and target CO2 volumes…)?

I hate racking to a bottling bucket, and since my fermenter has a bottom discharge valve I’d rather go straight from the fermenter to the bottle, atop some priming sugar.  I’ve tried the 1/2 TSP of granulated table sugar and Domino Dots methods with success, but corn syrup seems easy enough to add by the mL via a 5 mL size medicine syringe to each bottle.

Perhaps corn syrup sold in health food stores is free of the added junk found in Caro.  ???

Given the density of the corn syrup there should be a means to compute how many grams per mL of actual corn sugar it contains.  Then one can apply more sophisticated computations of temperatures and remaining/target CO2 volumes if desired…  One source stated 1.33 g/mL as the density.

Corn syrup is one of the many priming options shown on theNorthern Brewer priming sugar calculator.

I too was getting tired of the bottling bucket because of oxidationin a recent Belgian iPA I did. So I approached it in a similar manner to what you say. Bottled from the fermenter at cold temperature. Two bottle at a time then cap. Dosed priming sugar from a syringe based on desired volume from calculator.

So far, consistent carbonation in bottles and hops are still strong and beer flavorful. Pale ale. Only three weeks into it and we will see how it holds up.

If you’re bottling from the FV then prime the whole batch at once IN the FV, that’s way less goofing around than priming each bottle.  If you’re concerned with oxidation then purge the FV with CO2 as best you can after priming. I’ve been doing it that way for well over 100 batches, and just to be really anal, I fill a large weather type balloon with ~7-10 gallons of CO2 and attach it to the airlock opening to try to retain the CO2 blanket on top of the beer.

If I’m calculating it correctly (and please allow that this is a big “if”), it looks like about 2.0-2.5 mL of corn syrup should nicely prime a typical 12 ounce bottle of beer.

The reason for not priming the entire batch in the fermenter was to avoid inconsistent carbonation and possible oxidation from stirring. I do not have the ability to use co2 at this point.

My reason for not adding priming sugar to the fermenter is that I no longer rack to a secondary.  I bottle straight off the primary.

OK, I’ve found some data indicating that corn syrup without “the other stuff” in it might be closer to a nominal room temperature density of 1.43g/mL, whereas I believe the “Karo types” found in grocery stores might be closer to around 1.33 g/mL.  With this in mind the good stuff of the corn syrup world might require closer to ballpark 1.8 to 2.3 mL per 12 Oz. bottle as a first ballpark guess.  If you are going to experiment with Corn Syrup for bottle priming purposes, an initial guess of 2 mL per 12 Oz. bottle “might” be a safe launching off point for experimentation purposes only.  With the emphasis upon “might” (as indeed, it “might not”).  No guarantees are expressed or implied for this advice.  Use all due caution and precaution.  All of this is mere speculation.  YMMV…

Brewers corn syrups consist of 80-82% solids by weight and 18-20% moisture.  Fermentable extract ranges anywhere from 35-82% by weight – they are made to match any sugar profile the brewer desires, so as to replicate the composition of a wort from a mash with grits or flakes, with standard acid-hydrolized syrups providing fermentable extract at the lower end, acid-enzyme products ranging up to full fermentability.  I don’t know the fermentability of the product linked above.  This would not be a great issue if used as a kettle adjunct, but you would certainly need to know this if using it for priming

This is the source where I found the ~1.43 g/mL data.  It does not appear to be “Brewers Corn Syrup”, so I have amended my post above to remove the word “Brewers”.

Per this data source there are 322 calories in 100 grams of corn syrup, and at ~1.43 g/mL 100 grams of syrup would be ~70 mL on a volume basis.

For comparison, granulated table sugar has 387 calories per 100 grams.

If 1/2 TSP of granulated table sugar is used to carbonate 12 Oz. of beer, and 1/2 TSP weighs 2.3 grams, then:

2.3/100 x 387 = 8.901 calories of granulated table sugar to prime 12 Oz. of beer.

8.901 calories x 70 mL/322 calories = 1.935 mL of corn syrup

So on a caloric basis 1.935 mL of “this” corn syrup and 1/2 TSP of table sugar are about equivalent.  Can caloric equivalence be used to determine carbonation equivalence?

Seems mighty overcomplicated.  If you just want fermentable sugar for priming, why not just make a good old priming solution with dextrose or table sugar on the stovetop, and know exactly what you’ve got?

funny how corn syrup is brought up while in the midst of a lawsuit (millercoors suing AB). and the funny thing about that is they do use corn syrup! and even funnier is they claim its a ‘fermentation aid’. ‘we’re feeding the yeast!, we swear! they don’t really like barley!’

you should know that 90+% of all corn grown in the US is GMO and more than likely the corn syrup you found is GMO. Same would go for flaked maize and flaked rice. just saying…

One could make the argument that all the corn or maize, and for that matter any grain crop consumed throughout history has been a GMO, the modifying just took place at an out of doors lab using selective breeding, rather than a modern indoors lab with gene splicing.

If really worried about GMO corn, you could just brew with teosinte grass.  Best of luck.  [emoji6]