kit sugar info needed

[andrew7931]

Hi guys

i was just wanting to know if 500g of bewing sugar can be replaced with 500g of grains would that have the same amount of suger or would i need to say add 750g of grains to replace the 500g of suger is it like for like or is there some kind of calculation? I want to make a coopers kit but have grains instead of the sugar to get a better brew any help would be grate.

thanks

Andrew

[Thirsty Jim]

There are far more accomplished grain brewers around than me but my understanding is that 500g of dextrose will raise the ABV of a Cooper's can by 1.0% in 23 litres while 1000g of crystal only would only raise the ABV 0.8%.  So on this sum you would probably need 1.2kg of grain to substitute 500g of dextrose in 23 litres.

What sort of brewing sugar do you mean ?  Cooper's sell Brewing Sugar that is 80% dextrose and 20% maltodextrin.  500g of Coopers Brewing Sugar would raise ABV by 0.8% in 23 litres so you could sub that for 1kg of grain. 

[Otto Von Blotto]

The usual conversion is between grain and malt extract, from memory it's about 1.5x so you'd use say 1.5kg grain to get about the same amount of sugars as 1kg dry malt extract. 

In terms of ABV, you'd need a higher amount of grain to sugar because sugar completely ferments out, where extract doesn't. Also, the type of grain influences it; base malt ferments out more than something like crystal malt so it will provide more ABV for the same weight compared to crystal. 

[Naughty Corner Brewing]

Just to be clear as no one said it and I’m not sure of your brewing knowledge.

If you were going to use grain in place of sugar, you would need to do a mini mash on the grain to activate the enzymes to “chop up” the available sugar into something fermentable.

A steep of grains will improve the flavour, but not be that fermentable.

A mini mash isn’t much harder than a steep to do.

[andrew7931]

Hi guys

Thanks  for the replies I was just thinking about steeped grain and a beer kit instead of sugar to get a better brew. So How much grain would I need 2.5kg ? To get the sugars  equals to 1kg of brewing sugar? I don’t want to do a mini mash as I brew all grain I just wanted a quick brew instead of 5 hours my idea was to get a coopers pale ale kit and steep some pail malt and dry hop. 
how do you guys improve a kit ? 
thanks 

Andrew 

[Shamus O'Sean]

If you already brew all grain then you are streets ahead of most first time post'ers.

Otto has it pretty right in my mind.  One of the best brews I did was a Thomas Coopers Golden Crown Lager with a 2kg Pilsner Malt mini-mash/steep.  OG was 1.045.

You still have to do the steep around 67°C and keep it there for an hour.  So whether you call it a mini-mash or a steep does not really matter.  In my recipe I still did a 70 minute boil to deal with DMS.  I also chucked in 22g of Saaz at 10 minutes to go and 22g for a 15 minute flame-out addition.

Going back to extract basics, I suggest rather than trying to get your fermentables from grains, use Light Dry Malt or Liquid Malt Extract.  This is the way to quickly get fermentables into your brew.  You can add overnight cold steeps of Crystal Malt and/or 20-30 minute hot steeps of other malts to get something specific.  Otherwise it takes nearly as long as an AG brew anyway.

It sounds like you are almost crawling out of the AG brewing rabbit hole only to divert down the extract rabbit hole instead.

Happy brewing, whichever way you decide to go.

[andrew7931]

Hi shamus 

thanks for the reply yes out of the frying pan in to the fire!! I love all grain but I do like cooper kits which I started of with 8 years ago after a bout 4 years I then Looked at extract brewing and thought I may as well go straight into all grain 

thanks

andrew 

[Otto Von Blotto]

Yeah if you're looking at it being quicker then using a kit and extract with a short steep of crystal or whatever is the go. If you mash base malt then obviously the wort needs to be boiled as well which adds more time on top of the mash. 

[andrew7931]

Hi otto

thanks for the reply so if I use just specialty grains and steep them  for 30 mins then light ale kit +LME 1kg it should work out well then ? I just find all kits that I have made seam to lack a little something 

Andrew 

[Otto Von Blotto]

That something is probably freshness. The biggest thing I noticed after switching to AG was how fresh the beers were. The flavours seemed to jump out, compared to kits and extract where it seemed a bit muddied/subdued. 

You can do that and/or add some hops as a dry hop or late boil additions or whatever as well, that improves most kit beers too.