Sugar addition during fermentation

KLucky_13

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Hello,

I'm struggling with filling out following situation in brewers friend:

I'm currently fermenting a Belgian Tripel with 0.5kg of sugar in the recepy => http://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/r ... achtigiets

When I add pure sugar to a recepy, I tend to add this 2 days into the fermentation (boil it in a bit of wort first). So the yeast has the time to consume the "harder" sugar in the wort before it can start on the easy sugar, which means better fermentation.

Anyway: I have put this fermentable as "late addition" and it clearly had an impact on the IBU's (went 2 point up). But after the brewday, I'm seeing a low brewhouse efficiency (49%) because it does not take into account that the sugar still needs to be added. Final SG was 1.052 and it expects an SG of 1.064 which i would have gotten if the sugar was added during the boil, but it was not.

So now I'm getting wrong numbers for the total efficiency.. Am I missing a function to tell brewersfriend that I added the sugar at day 2 and that the SG went up from a certain value to a another one?

For example:

End of brewday: SG = 1054
2 days of fermentation SG = 1025
I add sugar SG = 1037
end of fermentation SG = 1010

So at day 2 the SG went up due to the addition of sugar, then brewersfriend should bump up my efficiency..

anyone that can help me with this?
 
all I can say is thats normal, with more consecration of sugar the Ibu goes down less and it goes up, when adding late sugar it doesn't get boiled as much and decreases the evaporation making more sugar available
 
KLucky_13 said:
I'm struggling with filling out following situation in beersmith

Okay, first, this isn't a Beersmith support group. That out of the way, Brewer's Friend has the same issue with efficiency: You add a sugar into your recipe calculations, the software is expecting the sugar to be in the wort at the end of the brew day. It isn't there, your gravity is "low" and your efficiency is low. You can do the math yourself and determine the efficiency or, if it's the conversion efficiency you're interested in, leave the sugar out of the recipe formulation, at least in Brewer's Friend. A pure sugar contributes about 46 ppg (points per pound per gallon), a pound of sugar in a five gallon batch contributes about 9 points of specific gravity so you can always calculate back how much gravity you'll get out of an addition of pure sugar. Or, after you've recorded your conversion efficiency, add the sugar back into the recipe builder to get the rest of your stats.

The absence of sugar will increase hop utilization, so that would account for your IBUs increasing when the sugar is taken out. I do wish the Recipe Builder would include an "Add during fermentation" option for sugars or sugary adjuncts like honey or molasses. It doesn't, not yet, but I think it's a valid suggestion for upgrade.
 
Nosybear said:
KLucky_13 said:
I'm struggling with filling out following situation in beersmith

Okay, first, this isn't a Beersmith support group. That out of the way, Brewer's Friend has the same issue with efficiency: You add a sugar into your recipe calculations, the software is expecting the sugar to be in the wort at the end of the brew day. It isn't there, your gravity is "low" and your efficiency is low. You can do the math yourself and determine the efficiency or, if it's the conversion efficiency you're interested in, leave the sugar out of the recipe formulation, at least in Brewer's Friend. A pure sugar contributes about 46 ppg (points per pound per gallon), a pound of sugar in a five gallon batch contributes about 9 points of specific gravity so you can always calculate back how much gravity you'll get out of an addition of pure sugar. Or, after you've recorded your conversion efficiency, add the sugar back into the recipe builder to get the rest of your stats.

The absence of sugar will increase hop utilization, so that would account for your IBUs increasing when the sugar is taken out. I do wish the Recipe Builder would include an "Add during fermentation" option for sugars or sugary adjuncts like honey or molasses. It doesn't, not yet, but I think it's a valid suggestion for upgrade.

Sorry, got confused. I meant brewers friend (still using beersmith and making the transition towards brewersfriend). I'll adapt the startpost. Anyway thanks for your reply
 
My reply was a little tone deaf. Sorry for that.
 

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