Thanks, that's good to know.

[biologist]
Carbohydrates more complex than monosaccharides are only fermentable if the organism has the appropriate enzymes to reduce them to simple sugars. Since sucralose is an artificial molecule, its unlikely that any naturally occuring enzyme would "fit" it sufficiently to break it down. The maltodextrin you saw in the packaging information is a bulking agent, since sucralose goes about 600 times farther by weight in sweetening than sucrose does. People like to add a teaspoon of sweetener to their coffee - you can't just tell them to use 1/600 teaspoon of sucralose, so the manufacturer adds maltodextrin to bulk the powder up. Since its sparingly digestible by humans, it doesn't add much to the calorie count. Maltodextrins are, naturally, fermentable, so if you add yeast to Splenda (sucralose mixed with maltodextrins) dissolved in water, you will get fermentation, but you'll end up with a sweet liquid as the sucralose will probably remain unchanged.

From what I gather about diabetics and alchohol, the body reacts to ethanol as though it was a simple carbohydrate, so you need to count any alcohol consumption against your daily allowance of carbs.

[/biologist]

I have been using splenda in beer and wine for a few years now. Sucralose is not fermentable, but the maltodextrin added to the sucralose to make Splenda is fermentable by many bacteria and brettanomyces (common spoilage yeast) but not wine yeast. So, if your sanitation is effective, there should be no problem adding some splenda to wine for sweetness. What sweet wine is he planning to make? I have made sparkling apple cider with the regular priming sugar and 1/2 cup of Splenda for a 5 gal. batch (added at bottling time). Even 4 years later, it is still sweet, although now I prefer a dry cider.

wrplace,

Thanks for the infomation.

I'm not really sure what kind of wine he plans on making, honestly. He's just starting out, so I imagine it will be something from a kit for now. I'm sure it'll be some kind of red wine, but other than that, I have no clue.

It's good to know he can add Splenda after fermentation though if he desires more sweetness than is already present. Granted, I don't think he should be drinking much wine at all with the diabetes, but at least using Splenda for sweetening will help marginally if he does decide to have a drink now and again.


- joe

Splenda as a product is fermentable because sucralose is 600 times sweeter than sucrose, so manufactures cut pure sucralose with fructose and maltodextrine. Therefore there are some fermentables in Splenda as a product, but the benefits of sucralose are a sweeter fermented beverage with less calories but the chloro-carbon sugar can lend off flavor charateristics, and provides a higher gravity with less fermentables.