Need advice about body and dryness ingredients.

[pfooti]

I'm confused about some stuff on the whole brewing front. My initial forays into AG brewing have mostly been following recipes, but now I'm trying to get my head around the whys and wherefores of certain aspects of grain bill design. Consider the following proto-recipes:

First-
95% 2-row
5% amber malt
60 min @ 154F

Second-
85% 2-row
5% amber malt
5% dextrin/carapils
5% corn sugar
60 min @ 152 F

Assume both hit about a 1.070 OG after the boil and follow the same hopping / yeast schedule.

As I understand it (rudimentary), adding cara-pils to the mash puts more dextrins into the wort, as does mashing at higher temperature (because limit dextrinase gets denatured). Adding corn sugar to the wort results in a thinner, dryer beer.

The first recipe is roughly my jumping-off point for the IPAs I've been fiddling with. I love IPA, and the style (especially with lots of dryhopping) seems to work really well with freshly-brewed beer. No need to age this stuff, so I have been working through process and procedure with this recipe. My efficiency is up, I've gotten much more consistent in temperature (mash and ferment), and have figured out my water profile a lot better as well. I like this beer.

The second recipe is more-or-less the backbone of the Pliny the Elder clone that I found on Fred Bonjour's site. I've no reason to doubt the brewing prowess of Fred or of Russian River, so I'm trying to figure out why a recipe would have both cara-pils AND corn sugar in it. My initial idea would be that they balance each other out, netting zero. Maybe the idea was to get to a respectable OG without having way too much grain to start with, and then balance out the sugar addition with dextrins? Dunno.

I'm also trying to figure out if there's a functional difference between a cara-pils component in the mash and just mashing at a higher temp. I'm sure there's a whole raft of secondary effects from a higher mash temp, whereas cara-pils mostly adds dextrins, right?

I'll probably just end up brewing these things in smaller batches side-by-side to taste the difference. I'm really interested in playing with sugar adjuncts in my beers at the 5-10% range, recently read a book about Belgian style brewing. I also found that between my local food co-op and the asian market, I can get some *really* interesting sugars ranging from great grade B maple syrup to sucanat to palm sugar.

[BDawg]

Great questions-
You already have a good grasp of the situation and are right when you say they cancel each other out, though I doubt that that was the actual intent.

The thing with IIPA's is that they tend to get cloying simply due to the amount of grain in them.
That's why the corn sugar is there, to add fermentables without increasing the body. Throw in all those hops, and it becomes sensory overload. Basically, the corn sugar thins it out so it finishes up a drier beer. This dryness is a cornerstone of the IIPA syle. You want a dry IIPA, or it will be cloying and not very drinkable. Drying it out makes it much more enjoyable. Most IIPA recipes add corn sugar to dry it out regardless of caramel malt content.

Crystal/Caramel malt is made by malting grain,then soaking it in water at mash temps long enough to complete conversion, then kilning it to dry it out and lock in the sugars. The kilning temp is what sets the color and cooks the sugars to produce the caramel. If you try to chew a couple of grains of 2 row then a couple grains of crystal/caramel malt, the crystal/caramel will be very hard to bite because it is full of sugar crystals. Carapils is simply low temp kilned crystal malt.

So, in addition to the primary component of adding dextrins, carapils adds a touch of residual sweetness to the flavor profile, and the dextrins also help with head retention in addition to the mouthfeel. Those secondary characteristics are important too, beyond just the moutfeel component.

Personally, I think there's not a big need for carapils in this beer, but I know lots of guys that swear by it and put it in everything they brew. (I'm not saying that Fred does this, just that LOTS of folks do). You can try it both ways and reduce or even drop the carapils altogether if it's overkill for you.

my .02-
HTH-

[Wutz]

One thing to note about the use of sugar to "dry out" a beer.

We've got to be careful about the specific wording of instructing someone to "add sugar to dry out the beer." The phrase should be "remove some of the base malt and replace the amount of gravity that base malt would have contributed with sugar because the sugar will ferment out completely whereas the basemalt would not."

Let's suppose two beers were brewed identically exept one with an addition of sugar. One would not finish drier than the other; one would just have a higher starting gravity and more alcohol in the end.

For example:

If a 5-gallon batch was brewed like this:

10lbs two-row mashed at 153
1 oz East Kent Goldings at 60 mins
White Labs 001 yeast.

It would start with a gravity around 1.052 and finish with a final gravity around 1.013.

If you added 2lbs of sugar it would start with a gravity near 1.070 and finish with a final gravity around 1.013 - no drier than the non-sugar recipe.

If you brewed the recipe with 6.5lbs of 2-row and 2lbs of sugar you'd start at a gravity of 1.052 and finish at a final gravity around 1.009 resulting in a drier beer than if you hadn't added sugar and compensated for it by removing some base malt.

Sorry for the long post, I just wanted to be sure we're all on the same page on this. If I've misunderstood what JZ, Palmer, Tasty, and other brewers who've brewed a lot longer and have probably done the side-by-side have said about this, feel free to correct me.

[pfooti]

Thanks for all the responses. I appreciate the long responses because I'm still new to these here brewing sciences. Just six months ago, I was of the "throw some stuff in there and put some yeast in it" school of brewing.

I think I'm getting my head around why and how to use sugar in this particular recipe. I have definitely noticed that the grain bills for this experimental IPA have been climbing as my recipe gets hoppier and hoppier over time. Next time I'll try to get some of my OG from some corn sugar, and see how that works in the recipe. As it happens, I've got some pacman yeast in my starter setup right now, so I'll be brewing this stuff up tuesday, probably.

I think I'll see how the cara-pils works in this recipe and go with backbone number two. I've got four ounces of whole amarillo and simcoe in my freezer what need turnin' into beverage form.

[mabrungard]

Recognize that another component in the creation of dryness and body is mash pH. Mashing at the high end of the desired mash pH range (5.2 to 5.8 @ room-temp) will reduce fermentability which decreases dryness and increases body. Conversely, mashing at the low end of that range will increase the dryness and decrease the body perception.

Just another tool in the brewer's tool box.

[pfooti]

Huh, cool. Good to know.

[Quin]

If you added 2lbs of sugar it would start with a gravity near 1.070 and finish with a final gravity around 1.013 - no drier than the non-sugar recipe.

I believe the additional alcohol produced from the extra two pounds of sugar should result in a lower FG. Since the specific gravity of alcohol is less than 1.000 ( 0.789 for ethanol), the final gravity will be lower 1.013.

I was just listening to the second Vinnie show last week (the one with the Vinnie puppet). During the show, Vinnie mentioned the sugar/carapils issue because he gets a lot of questions about it. He said they added sugar to make up a few gravity points. Something about the mash tun not being large enough and didn't want to make a volume less than their normal batch size.