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Using Inverted Table Sugar (Sucrose) for Priming

Wastegate

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I understand that it takes more Table sugar than corn sugar to carbonate beer with. What if you inverted the sucrose by adding an acid like lemonjuice to the 20 min boil and then added it to the bottling bucket for priming

To me it only makes sense if you invert it, It would work better/faster than just plain sucrose. Would it be the same as corn sugar? If you think about it, your boiling the mix anyhow. Just add some lemon juice and your done.

Your thoughts.

Cheers
Preston
 
WOW I was surprised no one responded.

Your question is a compound question:

1.) Can  you use invert sugar to bottle?  Yes   I have never done so, but the yeasts can consume both the monosaccarides in invert sugar just fine.

2.) Can you invert sugar in a  wort boil?   No absolutely not.  "Boiling temperatures in the range 225 deg F to 300 deg F are high enough to cause significant inversion." http://www.allbusiness.com/wholesale-trade/merchant-wholesalers-nondurable/721156-1.html

3.) Does the acid ( lemon juice) work to break the sugar down? No. The acid has very little to do with that (nothing at all really). The acid whether it's lemon juice, cream of tartar or vinegar  only serves to interfere with crystal formation while the sugar is being heated.

Invert Sugar (what I suspect you are referring to) is  Sucrose  that’s been through hydrolysis.  In hydrolysis the disaccharide is broken into  down leaving the two sugars glucose & fructose.  When you do it the process  requires enormous heat. When a yeast does it they do it so very elegantly using enzymes to coax  the bonds apart.

You can not invert sugar in a wort boil.
This is because you can not  achieve the heat necessary to break the molecule in a 212 F  boil.

That's what happens when you invert sugar: you break the bond using heat. The result is two monosaccarides ( glucose and fructose) the reason an acid is used is because you need something to interfere with crystallization.  Cream of Tartar, vinegar and lemon juice are all used variously. I don't know whether one is better than another or even if one is more suited to  some end use over another.


As a general proposition wort will have 5  sugars  They are glucose, fructose, sucrose, maltose and maltotriose.  
Interestingly the yeast use these sugars in a linear progression consuming  
Glucose first, then fructose, then sucrose, then maltose with  maltotriose being consumed last.

Sucrose is, as you know, made up of glucose and fructose. When a yeast cell encounters sucrose it takes it into the cellular wall where the sugar is broken down (hydrolysed) using the enzyme invertase.  The result is glucose and fructose

By using invert sugar  you will have already done this work for the yeast.
It is interesting how much energy you had to put into the sucrose to invert it but how little the yeast does  -  yes?    The yeast enzyme process is far more efficient.

Once the Sucrose is broken down the fructose and glucose are  assimilated into the glycolytic pathway (http://biotech.icmb.utexas.edu/glycolysis/pathway.html ).

Maltase is the enzyme that carries maltose and maltotriose through the cellular wall.   Maltase is blocked by the monosaccarides  glucose and fructose.  So  until those have passed through the wall and been consumed the maltose and maltotriose are  left outside which is why they are consumed later.

As an after thought you mentioned adding the sugar to the boil.
If you did this, then no matter what sugar you used  it would be consumed in the ferment up to that point where the alcohol killed off the yeast.   You'd have a very alcoholic brew around 10% I should think.   Then, to bottle carbonate, you'd need  to pitch a more alcohol tolerant yeast like a champagne or wine yeast along with the extra sugar ( assuming there was no sugar left in the original ferment) .   Which parenthetical causes one to wonder whether there would be a way to accurately gauge the amount of sugar you have  at bottling.   You would need to  use a hydrometer to measure the sugars remaining as compared to what you started  out with
(way too sophisticated  for me as I use the Trappist  "suck-on-the-finger" test).  I'd guess they'd be maltose and maltotriose that would remain  but that would depend on how much invert sugar you added to the boil to begin with.



 
I have been doing some research on this subject. It has been interesting.
WOW I was surprised no one responded.
Me to! Thanks for adding to the subject!

Corn sugar starts out life as Glucose, and with processing turns into Dextrose (Note: You can get High Fructose corn sugar also. But the LHBS sells Dextrose). So it is my guess, that this is why it takes longer for bottle conditioning when using table sugar. Because during the bottling process we boil the table sugar for 20 min. Whether we add an acid or not it turns into Glucose and Sucrose and not Dextrose. Which in turn takes longer for the Yeast to consume. How much longer would be dependent on the beer, the amount of alcohol, and the yeast strain.

Cheers
Preston
 
I think dextrose is the right handed version of  glucose
Ya gotta use a little more dextrose when priming

In the spirit of "everything  on the internet is gospel"
http://www.brewery.org/library/YPrimerMH.html

 
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