What is "Adjunct" in a recipe.

Dextrose maybe?

 

Anything besides water, hops, malts, and yeast.
Typical examples are:
Chocolate, Honey, Pure Sugar

Typically you don't want adjuncts to make up more than 1/3 of your fermentables.

In your recipes best guess is probably table sugar.
In an IPA you don't need any adjuncts really, just substitute more malt extract.
In fact it'll probably taste better than if you used table sugar.

If the extract is old it might come out less than desirable as well, extracts are much better when fresh.

 

That's a weird use of the term. Perhaps they mean corn sugar.

Adjunct refers to unmalted grains in the mash, but brewers seem to have expanded the term to include sugars and anything else that isn't malt, hops, water, or yeast.

 

What's the entire recipe?
You could plug it into Hopville to see what you'd need.

 

What size batch is this recipe for?
It says quart's of extract and not lbs? Not sure how I can convert qts into lbs since a qt of water can weigh significantly less than a qt of extract. How much does the extract weigh, is it dry or liquid?

EDIT-
Just found a converter, looks like that's 1lb 8 oz of extract there, crazy low amount for a 5 gallon batch so I'm gonna assume it's a 2 gallon batch.

Without the adj for a 2 gallon batch you'll have an OG of 1.041, not too bad as is but if you use a full quart of extract it'll bring it up to 1.050 so it's really up to you how heavy you want it.

Without knowing the original adj we can never know how much or little to add to make up for it, also it might have had certain flavors that you'll be missing out on.

I'd just go ahead and use a full quart of extract.

 

How hold is the recipe?

 

Funny thing, I list all the instant/flaked grains in as adjuncts too. Ahem, instant rice. AKA not needing mashed. I guess that's a bit off base because crystal grains aren't adjuncts either.

 

Technically the term is "malt adjunct" and is used to describe unmalted grains which require the enzymes in malt to ensure conversion.
Over time the word got confused with "addition" and is generally used to describe anything added to the malt in the mash tun which provides extra fermentables.Though sugar really isn't an adjunct few brewers these days use the strict definition.

 

Coolio. Thanks for the info on that. I always thought "adjunct" was the generic term for E-numbers like colouring and added protein. Two I know from the top of my head are E405 (propylene glycol algenate), which is used for super frothy, sticky heads in most adjunct lagers, and E150, which is the caramel colouring used in most trappist beers.

 

Pretty much what I was thinking. Except I like the term additive over addition. The stuff that Dennoman is talking about are what I would call additives, not adjuncts. I assume in the recipe at the start of the thread, adjunct refers to some sort of sugar. However, it's odd to see it as a volume, so some sort of sugar solution? It's not very helpful.

 

If you tell us other details of the recipe, I am sure that someone in this forum would be happy to offer up advice on how to adapt it to make a great IPA. If it is a 5 gallon batch, 2 lbs of sugar could be a little too much, at least by my way of thinking.

It's worth considering that old homebrew recipes (from decades ago) often called for large amounts of sugar, but its use in homebrew has declined some. You'll see it called for in beers that want to keep the body light but want to ramp up the alcohol or dry out a beer, such as Belgian strong ales and Saisons. IPAs can be a good candidate on sugar additions for these same reasons. Some of the malt that would be needed to make the desired gravity of these beers gets swapped out for sugar. Some sugars can also add a touch of flavor depending on how they are processed - the dark candi sugar syrups contribute to many fine dark Belgian ales. In the Belgian ales, sugar additions might range from 0-30% of the fermentables. In something like an IPA, 0-15% is probably more typical, although BA pattro1 has posted some traditional English pale ale recipes with higher amounts of sugar than that. My IPAs have always been at the 0% end of that range. Sugar ought to be considered as option for getting a desired effect but not a requirement for the style.

 

So the recipe you are looking at is

IPA Recipe, 5 gallons
6 lbs pale liquid malt extract
1 lb carapils
1 lb crystal 40
x lb table sugar

Plus hop additions.

Timmush, do you know what you are doing for hops, as that could be important for balance?

My gut reaction is to cut the carapils and crystal in half and use half a pound of sugar to get the gravity to about 1.065 or so. Other opinions?

 

I wouldn't use sugar at all and would leave the specialty grains as is.
Just use all 6lbs of extract and don't worry about the adjunct.
Just make sure to balance your hops correctly for an IPA.