Diabetic beer

I guess you are posting from Australia. In USA they use a product called "Beano" I dont know whether we can get a similar product here. It is designed as a dietary suppliment to break down complex carbohydrates sometimes known as long chain carbohydrates in the gut, thus preventing flatulence. It works by making the otherwise unusable carbohydrates available for breaking down into simpler sugars by the digestive system. In beer it does much the same thing I understand, breaking down carbohydrates and proteins into simpler substances that the yeast can use. A good place to find something similar is a good, well stocked health food store. Beano is an enzyme so that's the question you must ask. If you mash your beer as opposed to using extracts, careful selection of ingredients and mashing regimes as well as yeast choice will also reduce the amount of residual carbohydrates and sugars in the finished beer. If the beer turns out too dry you can add small amounts of lactose (available from your home brew shop) which is non-fermentable sugar extracted from cows milk. Your beer will also be a bit thin but there's nothing you can do about that without re-introducing carbohydrates. Hope this helps, others will be able to add more. Steve W.

Is all beer diabetic beer if there are no sugars left to ferment?

-gcitagh

Yes, but there would have to be absolutely no sugars left, either brewing sugars or natural sugars. normal brewing will not remove all these sugars. I've read that you can use a Enyzme called Beano the one that steve mentioned which allows the yeast to properly ferment all sugar and giving a much lighter FG.

Well, all the sugars will be fermented except lactose, which you don't have to worry about assuming you don't add it. Beano is only good for the starches that haven't been broken down into sugars. One thing that I can think of is to use a high attenuating yeast that ferments most the sugars. Other than that you'd have to use some fancy chemistry to remove all the sugars from solution. Good luck,

-gcitagh

-- -- I think starches still have to accounted for in a diabetic diet. Residual starches will be broken down to simple sugars in the digestive system. Steve W.

Actually, Beano breaks down unfermentable sugars into fermentable ones.

---------->Denny

On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 01:50:17 GMT, "QD Steve" said in alt.beer.home-brewing:

Saliva has enzymes that break down most starches. Just put a pinch of flour on your tongue - you'll taste the sugar it's being converted into.

On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 08:35:30 -0800, Denny Conn said in alt.beer.home-brewing:

Diabetics still have to be careful, even if there no sugar at all in the beer. My blood sugar goes up even with a brew that finishes around 1.000. I think the body converts alcohol to sugar.

Hmmm. Maybe a highly hopped non-alcoholic, fully fermented beer. Might as well ask for perpetual youth, health and wealth.

That is true...

Hey, you can ask...;)

--------->Denny

My grandfather was a diabetic, and he drank 2 martinis per day every day,

365.24 days of the year, from his youth to the day he died at around the age of 83. I don't think a little alcohol is going to hurt even a diabetic, as long as you know how to compensate with insulin or whatever. Even diabetics need to relax a bit.... although I'm sure it helps to go on a consistent regimen of "X" number of beverages per day.

All i taste is flour :-) nothing sweet about it.

On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 18:30:29 -0600, "David M. Taylor" said in alt.beer.home-brewing:

Having lived through death by diabetes (my second wife), I'm not about to experiment on *my* body. It's not one of the more pleasant ways to die.