Has anyone here actually experienced “cidery” flavors that can directly be attributed to nothing more than a high percentage of simple sugar in the recipe? Methinks this is an old wives tale from the days of yore before brewers focused on yeast health, pitching rates and controlling fermentation temperature.
Back in the days when brewing involved stale extract, a crapload of sugar and one 2-year old packet of Munton’s dry yeast that was stored warm, then I can see why you would expect a lot off off fermentation off-flavors. I’m sure all that simple sugar caused fermentation temps to take off pretty quick as well. But, I’ve just never picked up cider notes in any well-fermented Belgian or IIPA.
I think so too. Many belgian beers use high percentages of sugars and many super-high gravity recipes are almost 50% sugar. Probably what happened decades ago was that all malt beer had the flavor to cover bad yeast flavors. And simple sugars don’t have nutrients, making bad yeast flavors even worse.
I’ve definitely had cider flavours in the past (20 years ago) but I can’t say it was sugar or bad yeast or what. That was one of the reasons that I gave up on homebrewing for a while, cidery beer that was not good. I found it worst with high percentages of corn sugar (50%). Not saying it exists now but I still fear it to this day and it’s one of the reasons I moved to all grain.