Why do so many U.S. home brewers seem to prefer corn sugar for bottling when most probably have table sugar in their kitchen pantry that was purchased in a larger volume and at a lesser unit price?
And it takes less table sugar (sucrose) than corn sugar for bottle carbonation.
I don’t mind spending more for quality ingredients, but if product A works as well or better than product B and is less expensive to boot I’ll buy it every time.
I’ve bottle carbonated quite a few batches with sucrose and have never had a problem.
I have no prejudice either way. I primarily use corn sugar if I bottle simply because I bought 5 lbs of it years ago and still have a lot around. I tell myself it may dissolve more readily, but I wouldn’t swear to it. I use table sugar for brewing.
I have not used corn sugar in 6-7 years. I did not noticed any difference for bottle/keg conditioning when I switched to table sugar. Seems cheaper and easier to get.
I just use the organic cane sugar we keep around for cooking on the rare occasion that I bottle condition. I am sure it costs a lot more but it’s such a small amount and I already have it handy.
Just make sure you use a priming calculator where you plug in the specific sugar because each sugar source has it’s own amount of sucrose per unit of weight. I find Brewer’s Friend’s calculator very good.
I always use cane sugar. Used corn sugar with a couple of kits years ago and couldn’t tell any difference (using a calculator for the specific type of sugar being used). Either way, I think it’s a good idea to boil the solution for ten minutes to make sure it’s sanitized.
I use table sugar because I have it and it’s cheap.
If I had to guess at why corn sugar tends to be sold, it’s probably some mix of the legacy myth that table sugar makes your beer taste cider-y, homebrewers convincing themselves that corn sugar is better because corn is grain-based, and homebrew shops wanting to sell something that isn’t easily available in grocery stores for less.
Corn sugar is glucose where as table sugar is sucrose. The thinking behind corn sugar for priming sugar is that is is easier for the yeast to metabolize. Since the yeast is already at low vitality it may be a better option for bottle conditioning. But in practice it probably doesn’t matter.
I started with corn sugar because that is what came in the kits I bought. When I stopped using kits I switched to table sugar because we have it and it is cheap. The amount is so small that I can’t imagine there is any taste difference.
I’ve been using table sugar for about the past 150 batches since early 2000s. Works great. I can’t remember the last time I bought any corn sugar. Don’t have any, don’t want any.
I read somewhere recently that Lachancea (like Philly Sour) processes glucose differently from sucrose and that corn sugar vs table sugar can result in different levels of lactic acid production.
I’ll be using 4oz of Corn Sugar in the boil for a Cream Ale this morning. Why? Because the last time I did it, the beer came out absolutely fantastic. So why change? For a few pennies?
I suspect I will now be banished forthwith from this board.
Corn sugar is dextrose (chemically identical to glucose). I only use it in my West Coast IPA’s. Since I force carbonate everything and bottle from the keg when needed for a competition, I don’t use it to naturally carbonate the beer.
For things like my Tripel and Quad, I use table sugar, specifically beet sugar.
I suspect the prejudice towards using corn sugar instead of table sugar dates back to the early days of homebrewing in the 1970s and 1980s where the standard homebrew recipe consisted of mixing a 3.3 lb. can of Muntons & Fison’s liquid malt extract with 2 lbs. of table sugar. Homebrewers would complain that resultant beer tasted cidery, whereas if you brewed with 2 can of M&F LME and omitted the table sugar, the beer tasted much better. So table sugar was blamed for causing cider tastes in beer, when the real culprit was just using too much sugar of any kind.
Right. Dextrose and glucose are basically the same thing. I actually meant to say dextrose but it came out glucose. lol.
Regardless, I don’t think it matters much in bottle conditioning. The yeast have to take “an extra step” to covert the sucrose but they are fully capable of that extra step. It’s one of those things that checks boxes scientifically but doesn’t make much difference in real world application.
