Coopers Dextrose, what it does in beer and in a wash

What dextrose actually is

Dextrose is glucose in a dry, powdered form, and the reason brewers reach for it instead of the sugar in the kitchen cupboard is that yeast can take it straight down without having to break it apart first. Ordinary table sugar is sucrose, which yeast handles perfectly well, so the difference in a beer is smaller than people make out. Where dextrose earns its place is that it ferments out almost completely and leaves nothing behind it at all, no colour and no flavour of its own.

What it does in a beer

Adding dextrose to a kit tin lifts the alcohol and thins the body, and whether that's good news depends entirely on what you're brewing. In a pale beer it's usually exactly right, because the style wants to finish dry and you don't want anything getting in the way of that. In a stout or an amber it can leave the beer feeling hollow, which is the whole reason the brew enhancers exist, since they blend maltodextrin through the dextrose and the maltodextrin doesn't ferment, so it stays in the glass as body.

Dextrose is also the standard priming sugar, and if you're measuring it into bottles rather than using drops, it dissolves quickly and goes to work without leaving a haze.

Before the spirits part, the bit nobody tells you

Owning a still is lawful in Australia and we sell the gear, but distilling spirits at home is a separate question, and it needs an excise manufacturer licence from the ATO before you run anything at all. Plenty of people assume that buying the equipment settles it, and it doesn't, so I'd rather say it here than have you find out the hard way. Flavouring a purchased base spirit with an essence is a different activity and doesn't come into it.

What it does in a wash

With that said, dextrose is the usual fermentable in a sugar wash, and the reason is the same as it is in a pale beer. You want alcohol and nothing else, because everything else in there has to be dealt with later. A cleaner ferment going in means less work at the other end, which is why washes are built on dextrose rather than on raw sugar or on anything with molasses in it.

A turbo yeast is matched to that job and comes with its own nutrient, and the bag will tell you the sugar weight and the water volume it's designed around, so work to that rather than to a ratio off the internet.

When plain sugar is fine

I'm not going to pretend dextrose is magic. For a kit beer where you're adding a kilo of something fermentable, plain white sugar will make beer, and plenty of good beer has been made that way. What dextrose buys you is predictability, which matters more the more batches you do and matters most when you're trying to repeat a beer you liked.

Shop related products

• Coopers Dextrose 1kg. The standard bag, for a kit batch or for priming.
• Coopers Brew Enhancer 1 1kg. Dextrose with a little maltodextrin, for a pale beer that needs some body.
• Coopers Brew Enhancer 2 1kg. More maltodextrin again, which suits a darker or fuller beer.
• Coopers Light Dry Malt 500g. The other direction, when you want malt character rather than a dry finish.
• US-05 Safale Ale Yeast 11.5g. A neutral ale yeast that won't fight whatever you've added.

Did you know we also stock dextrose in the bigger bags in the shop, along with the turbo yeasts, the carbon filtering gear, no rinse sanitiser and the hydrometer you'll want for checking the ferment. None of that is on the website, so give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what's on the shelf.

The rest of it is in the homebrew collection, and Brewhilder, our homebrew adviser, will help you work out what to add to the kit you've got.

Read next

• Making spirits at home, the five steps and where the law sits
• What you need to make spirits at home, gear and licence
• What fermentation actually does, and how to keep yeast happy

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Sugar is the cheapest ingredient in the whole batch and somehow still the one I think hardest about.

Candeece