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Doing a homebrew for the first time, bought a kit to do it with; figured it be a good student method of saving money :).
Anyway, its currently in the fermenting bin, and when it comes to transferring I plan to transfer into a barrel rather than bottles.
One of the instructions is to add about 3oz of sugar per 5 gallons, but what kind of sugar would this be? Is it more brewing sugar, or can regular sugar or a different kind be used?
Thanks
If you want gas in your beer, kind of sugar does not matter, anything that ferment will work.
Will ferment clean, probably with hardly any side effects. Good choice, easy to obtain and pretty cheap.
Take about 20% more than sugar. It will be most "authentic" because, well, wort should be the only fermentable in your beer unless you know exactly why you want something else.
Works for me. Some say it brings wine-y tastes to your beer, but no one ever told me to taste them in my brew. But I tend to brew heavy ales. If you brew something more delicate, avoid table sugar. Better safe than sorry.
Pasteurizing part of wort before fermentation, keeping in the reserve and adding it back just before bottling works just like wort extract priming, only better. Literally no way it would ever introduce foreign tastes. This time is too late, but oh well. I never do it because it's a bit troublesome and benefit seems not worth it. But that's my personal opinion.
If you want your beer taste a bit like rum, that might be the way to go. I used it happily to enrich my dark beers.
Heavy change in taste. For really dark beers if, just before bottling, you decide this is exactly what they are lacking. use with caution and remember to take more of it than you would with sugar, but it will work, too.
Most probably it will not bring any honey-like taste or aroma to your beer. Waste of money unless you do it for some other reason.
Most of them are just one thing or mix of things I described above, with price doubled or tripled and fancy name on them. Would not buy. But if you already have stock of it, better use it for priming than main fermentation.
