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OK, so I was in the health food shop (again) and couldn't find any corn sugar. However, on a whim I bought some fructose. I am thinking of using it for priming the English ale I have pencilled in to start tomorrow.

My questions are: can I use fructose for priming? And, if so, can I treat it as though it were corn sugar in my carbonation calculations (I am looking at about 1.8 volumes carbonation which seems ballpark for this style)?

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  • @Poshpaws.....did you end up using the fructose? If so, how did it turn out?
    – ted
    May 23, 2013 at 0:20

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Fructose is fully fermentable. Assuming the fructose is completely dry, containing no moisture - as is the case with granulated table sugar, which is also fully fermentable - then you can use it in the same quantity as you would table sugar (sucrose). In fact, save your money; use table sugar for priming.

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  • Does this apply to high fructose corn syrup as well?
    – Wilhelm
    Sep 27, 2015 at 21:41
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You should be fine to use it as sugar, its the stuff you get in honey and that is fine to ferment.

Exactly how much to use is hard. I would guess it would be about 1 fuctose : 1.5 standard suggar as there is more energy per gram in fuctose.

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  • For the record, honey contains fructose as well as glucose.
    – brewchez
    Jun 16, 2011 at 0:11
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    but does energy/gram equate with fermentability? This is what leads to the carbonation in homebrew right?
    – Poshpaws
    Jun 16, 2011 at 9:43
  • @Poshpaws I know its nowhere near that simple. I was just assuming since there is 1.5 times the avalible energy for humans there will be 1.5 times as much for yeast. As a rough rule of thumb it works since suggar is fairly simple. If you were to do it proerly you would have to take in all sorts of factors. Im sure even amount of food to amount of co2 is non linear!
    – Tom Squires
    Jun 17, 2011 at 10:29
  • Not sure what you said about energy is true, yeast produces alchool from sugar, while humans have a different metabolism. Sucrose(C12H22O11) is made of one molecule of glucose(C6H12O6) and one of fructose(C6H12O6). Yeast splits sucrose in the two simple sugars (invertase) and then digests the two. So there is no difference. Moreover the part about energy is jsut wrong. Energy per gram of any carbohidrate is 4cal/g so it is the same for sucrose and fructose. CO2 is simply liked to gravity points and attenuation of yeast.
    – Paolo
    May 23, 2013 at 10:13

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