Corn Sugar

[Sandhusker]

Any of you fellas ever use corn sugar on your UJSM? I've got quite a bit that I've used for priming home brew. Was wondering if it did anything that regular sugar didn't or even if it worked as good.

GO BIG RED

[Old_Blue]

I believe it is as fermentable as cane sugar or close to it. A little more expensive though.

[wineo]

I have used it on a few ferments.Mostly oat whiskey,and rice wine.It gives a smoother flavor compared to white cane sugar,but not alot.If you have it,use it.If you have to buy it,use cane sugar.Its cheaper.

[Oaty]

In brewing , it's generally used only as a supliment to the malt. It should be used only at bottling to produce carbonation. Otherwise, it produces an apple vineger taste. It'll work fine for our uses, but as Wineo said it's more expensive than cane. If you have it use it for brewing it cost too much for use here.

[Dan Call]

I don't understand how corn sugar would produce, or effect, carbonation in beer. I'm surely not a beer-maker but I could only assume that the corn sugar would aid or ensure your fermentation would start by providing some sugars to work on.

Corn sugar, from my understanding, is essentially the concentrated natural sugars of corn, the same kind you get in a starch conversion in the grain mashing process. Only used it as an adjunct to other things like molasses in a mash, so taste was probably overpowered by the molasses. I used corn syrup, the Kairo type stuff, and it will give you a quick boost in SG if you're mash is too thin to get fermentation, like higher than .6 or .7. The corn sugar in powdered form like in home brew shops, I've never used, but since it's pure, unlike the corn syrup stuff, it would surely lend better to fermentation than even corn syrup.

I've known other people to use it as an adjunct in cooked corn mashes, added on cool down, and gotten higher ABV after fermentation with a strong enough yeast, like a distiller's yeast, but not that turbo stuff, something that is friendlier to grain nutrients.

[Dnderhead]

Dan they add a small amount to the bottle and cap, small amount of fermenting takes place giving co2

[wineo]

As far as beer goes,Its used for carbonation,and sometimes to raise the abv some.White sugar in beer gives a sharper taste.Thats why they dont use it.
I used corn sugar in some of my oat whiskey ferments to raise the abv some,but ended up using white sugar on the rest of the ferments because it didnt taste any different.Your not going to see or taste much difference unless your making a plain corn sugar wash.It will taste a little smoother.

[muckanic]

A lot depends on your fermentation time and type of yeast used. With brewer's yeast, fructose (via sucrose) can give a "green", aldehyde note that takes a while to mature away compared to dextrose/glucose. Some stillers actually chase those raw notes, as they can provide some fruity complexity in a whiskey or rum. That is why they don't mess around performing the run with certain styles. Another way of achieving a similar effect is to "drop" the wash off the primary ferment sediment as soon as possible, which slows maturation. A hazard with these techniques, however, is that they generally increase the proportion of heads.