Residual Sugars in beer?

In general beer yeasts will consume between 70-80% of the sugars in the wort. There are some styles, like lambics and some sours, where they consume almost everything, but I'd venture that the majority of the beer you drink has a decent amount of residual sugar already.

Has this been an issue for you health-wise? If so, then you might want to lean towards the drier styles.

 

There are complex sugars in many (most?) beers that the yeast won't eat, thus the beers that have a lot of this type of sugar will taste sweet. Brewers also have other tricks that they can use to retain a sweet taste to a beer. Two beers that come quickly to mind are Southern Tier's Creme Brulee and their Choklat. But I don't know if NEIPAs are brewed to be sweet or if the hops are giving the sweet impression with the juiciness of the citrus and other fruit flavors.

 

If you don't want extra sugar in your beer, never drink Avery Rumpkin. Almost like they poured a little beer in a bottle of sugar.

 

How does beer compare to wine? RS% is a normal spec of wine. Correlation between ABV & RS?

 

Well, if you want to avoid sugar probably the best metric I can think of is your taste buds. Anything that tastes sweet likely has a lot of residual sugar.

But I mean to be completely fair here if you want to make an exception for alcohol but avoid sugar spirits are probably your best bet. I mean beer is essentially a bucket load of various starches and plant carbohydrates all mixed up with microbes. So if avoiding sugar is your goal here beer is going to be a minefield to navigate for you.

 

If only we could get this information on the beer we drink (website, label, etc) like almost every other product we consume...

 

All beers have some residual extract, but some certainly have more than others, like imperial stouts and barleywines.

Your chemistry needs more chemistry, dude.

Indeed it does.

 

Although this is true, the body does use alcohol as an energy source by converting it into acetyl CoA via alcohol and aldehyde dehydrogenase (plus a bunch of other enzymes) and at 7 calories per gram it is almost twice as energy dense as carbohydrates (4 calories per gram).

 

There is no direct answer to this as different beers and different wines have different ABVs and amounts of residual sugars, though wines tend to be in the same ABV range, beers can differ rather widely.

I'm sure you could find it somewhere, but since beer and wine manufacturers aren't required to list specific gravity readings on their labels, it might be decently difficult.

 

I have diabetes so have to watch my sugar very carefully. Tho I don’t.... I drink a ton of big adjunct stouts and neipas they usually make me feel like crap.
Not sure where I’m going with this. But yeah. Beer probably has a lot of sugar. Don’t be like me if you have diabetes.

 

How does other beer affect you? Wine? Other booze?

 

Don’t drink enough other alcohol to tell.
Sometime I drink beer and I’m fine other times it will hit me like a brick wall I’ll start getting dizzy, sweaty,...blurry vision I assume it makes my blood sugar spike.
Seems to happen mostly with pastry stouts and neipas.

 

Residuals sugars has been covered above... I have nothing to add.

The "milk"shake IPAs often have added lactose, which is mostly unfermentable sugar added to beer for sweetness and body. Lactose is the defining ingredient in the traditional milk stout style, and you will often find it in the trendy modern so-called "pastry" stouts.

 

“A bunch of residual sugar” is subjective. If it fits into the stylistic guidelines, then it’s “acceptable.”

As a home brewer, I can tell you that all beer has residual sugars. Most of the final sugar content is in relation to the yeast attenuation and original gravity. Most yeast can only consume a certain percentage (range) of sugar. 65-80% is the usual attenuation.

For the sake of brevity, the bigger the beer, the more sugar there will be in the original gravity/final gravity. There are exceptions to this of course. Some sours with exotic sacc/brett/lactic pitches come to mind. Highly attenuative Belgian strains are another that ive been able to get between 85-95% attenuation.

Beers that are low in alcohol or those with a high level of attenuation will have less residual sugar and sound like your best bet.

 

Anybody have any guesses in terms of grams how much sugar is in an imperial stout?

 

You talking a normal imperial stout or something from The Bruery?

 

1.5 grams per oz....

or to put it in perspective, less than a soda ~ 3.25 grams/per oz

 

A normal imp stout in the 10-12% abv.