Spraymalt instead of sugar for priming?

[Stuart]

recently brewed a kit of Muntons Premium - Smugglers Special Ale. I used light hopped spraymalt in the bottles instead of sugar for priming. The beer has a VERY bitter taste and doesn't taste all that great.
Was this a bad idea?
Anything I can do, or should I just ditch it and use sugar in future?

[Dan]

I would doubt a small amount of spray malt would adversely affect the flavour, mind you there are hops in it, why did you use this anyway? run out of dextrose/sugar?

Is that hop bitterness your tasting? if so let it sit for a few weeks and it may smooth out.

[Stuart]

Tried spraymalt because it suggested it on the instructions as an alternative to sugar or carbonation drops, to give better body and taste.
I suspect it could be hop bitterness, so I'll leave it for another few weeks and see what happens.

[Fairlane]

You don't have to use sugar for priming if you don't want to.
I use the Krausening method as outlined in Papazians 'joy of homebrewing' book and, with a very small amount of tweaking have got it working prefectly. Basically you just draw off a certain volume of wort before you pitch your yeast (based on your final volume and O.G.), into a sterile container and keep it in the fridge. Ferment the beer as normal and when you go to bottle, rack the beer into a clean fermenter and mix in the wort from the fridge.

Very easy and won't cost you extra for carbonation additives...

dh

[denimglen]

The hopped DME shouldn't make it more bitter as those hops weren't in the boil - unless you boiled the DME for >30 minutes to sanitise I don't think it would make a difference.