SUCROSE SOLUTION TO DEXTROSE SHORTAGES

Country Malt Group believes in the importance of keeping our customers and the industry up to speed on market trends or potential disruptions with raw material supply. It’s vital to the partnerships we’ve established with our customers that you’re aware of issues as soon as possible and have time to adjust, as needed.

Dextrose Supply Chain Challenges 

Similar to how we proactively communicated the challenging North American barley crop of 2021, we wanted to bring attention to some challenges we’re uncovering with the North American supply of dextrose (corn sugar). We anticipate a sizeable reduction of available dextrose supply for the remainder of the year across the industry, which may impact anyone using this product for beer or seltzer production.

This supply challenge is due in large part to labor shortages at production sites, heightened demand coming from healthcare and other downstream industries, and increased consumer consumption of beverages produced with dextrose.

We expect dextrose supply to become tighter throughout the year and will be managing our inventories across all sites accordingly. In the event our customers aren’t able to source the dextrose needed for their beverage production, we’re able to provide some options to bridge the gap until the situation improves.

Leaning on our vast supply network as well as our internal industry experts, our recommendation is to consider sucrose (refined cane sugar) as a suitable alternative. 

Compared to dextrose, sucrose has the following attributes:

• Pricing:  Sucrose is becoming an increasingly economical choice, as market shortages will cause dextrose price to inflate 
• Availability: Unlike dextrose, there is no current or foreseeable concern with supply 
• Yield: By weight, sucrose provides 9% more extract over dextrose, which means you could potentially use less in your recipes pound for pound 
• Fermentability: Like dextrose, sucrose is 100% fermentable by typical brewing yeasts 
• Sustainability: Non-GMO and sustainably sourced  
• Color: No color, meaning it will not tint your seltzers 

For those who anticipate needing some assistance in fermentation, we have products such as DSM Maxinvert and TY48 Turbo Yeast which will ensure complete and maximum conversion of sucrose, while also increasing efficiency and reducing costs. 

We appreciate your patience as we work through this situation and will update you with new information as we’re able.   

For more information on our sucrose, for questions, or for assistance, please reach out to your local CMG Sales Representative – we’re always happy to help!