Table sugar vs Candi sugar

[Rezzin]

I've been on a Tripel kick lately and plan on doing one once it starts to warm up. I was doing a little research tonight and I'm still a bit confused. I made a Golden Strong a while back that used 6% table sugar and 3% honey and don't recall any cidery flavors. I've read lots of reports of 'sour' 'cidery' 'rummy' off flavors from using table sugar but I'm wondering if it's just not the yeast characteristics (I'm assuming they are brewing belgians).

I read an interesting thread tonight from the head brewer of Five Island Brewing Co in Australia. Here is what he has to say.

revdrjbob06-22-2004, 03:03 AM
Guys and Girls,
Just a quick note on Candii sugar, and it's differences from that of normal table sugar (sucrose). Firstly making candii sugar is to understand what it is and how it is different from sucrose or normal sugar. Candii sugar is invert sugar, in that its constituents are broken down by "inversion", simply put, splitting its atoms (how cool does that sound?). To make invert sugar or candii sugar, you are basically making toffee, by heating a sugar syrup to a high tempreature with a bit of citric acid to help the inversion along. The sugar is processed to make candy sugar. And candy sugar has a number of effects on a beer. It has been caramelised, and this gives nice complex flavours, including a nice sweet edge, a distinct aroma, and most importantly, a dense mousse-like head that is so characteristic of Belgian beers.
So let's say you want to make 500 grams of candy sugar. You weigh 500 g of white sugar and into a small pot. Add enough water to make thick syrup. Add a pinch of citric acid (I will explain why later). Now bring to a boil and keep the temperature between hard ball and soft crack (127-135 °C). As evaporation will cause the temperature to rise, have a small amount of water and add a tablespoon every now and then.
The colour will gradually change from clear to light amber to deep red as the boil proceeds. Light candy sugar is a very light pee colour (yes, that type of pee). This can take only 15 minutes. Dark candy sugar is very deep red. This can take hours. Once you are at the colour you desire (and a lot of that is on taste), you let the temp go to hard crack (150 °C). Once it hits hard crack, turn off the heat and pour it into some greaseproof paper. As it cools it will go rock hard. I then put it in the freezer until I'm ready to use it.
Now why add citric acid? This is to 'invert' some of the sugar. Simply put, cane sugar (sucrose) is made up of two other sugars (glucose and fructose) joined together. Yeast must spend time and effort breaking the joining bonds to allow them to get at the simple sugars they need for metabolism. This can also be done chemically in an acid environment with heat. The citric acid supplies the acid, and the heat is there when you make the candy sugar. Invert sugar tastes a bit sweeter than regular sucrose.

I haven't brewed many belgian styled beers in the past (2 belgian pales and 1 golden strong) and I've never done a Tripel before so I'd like to hear what others have to comment on this.

It seems like most agree that as long as your sugar isn't over 10% or so, you can get away with it. The yeast characteristics would mask any cidery flaws as a result from the sugar.

[brahn]

Have you read Brew Like a Monk? I highly recommend it if you're going to brew any Belgian style beers. It's a pretty quick read and well worth the time. I'd be happy to lend you my copy in exchange for a pint of the results.

The book says that the biggest problem that homebrewers have with making Belgian beers is using enough sugar. 15-20% Sucrose (table sugar) or Dextrose is perfectly acceptable in a Belgian style beer. Just from a quick flip through a few pages he mentions that Achel, Chimay, Rochefort, Westvleteren, Ommegang, and Victory all use either plain old sucrose or dextrose. I also remember Alan from bodensatz.com saying that he saw the sacks of sucrose on his tour of Unibroue.

If you're looking to brew a darker Belgian style, absolutely look into making your own carmelized sugar or use the awesome (but expensive) stuff that's being imported from Belgium in the last year or so. Otherwise, table sugar should do you just fine, the "cidery" flavor from sugar is a myth.

[brew captain]

The argument for using invert sugar is that the yeast do not need to waste energy to generate invertase to split the glucose/fuctose bond of sucrose. The yeast are reportedly able to perform better with less stress which eliminates the production of some less desireable fermentation byproducts and results in lower attenuation.

I just make five pound of invert sugar in the amber range of color. It was easy to do because I happened to have some citric acid handy. I hear you can use Cream of Tarter (tartaric acid) as well.

Is it worth it? I won't know until my tripel is finishes fermenting and I get to taste a sample...

Cheers!

[Oskaar]

Just a quick note when it comes to mead. Using table sugar will definitely add a cidery taste which seems to be enhanced by the honey character in mead.

Also note that if you are making a cysers (apple juice and honey instead of water and honey for traditional mead) it's kind of a standard practice by some people (not me) to add raw brown sugar, muscovato sugar, panochitas (the raw Mexican sugar cones you find in the store) or turbinado sugar to enhance the cidery/apple-y flavor in the cyser.

Hope that helps,

Oskaar

[Rezzin]

Have you read Brew Like a Monk? I highly recommend it if you're going to brew any Belgian style beers. It's a pretty quick read and well worth the time. I'd be happy to lend you my copy in exchange for a pint of the results.

The book says that the biggest problem that homebrewers have with making Belgian beers is using enough sugar. 15-20% Sucrose (table sugar) or Dextrose is perfectly acceptable in a Belgian style beer. Just from a quick flip through a few pages he mentions that Achel, Chimay, Rochefort, Westvleteren, Ommegang, and Victory all use either plain old sucrose or dextrose. I also remember Alan from bodensatz.com saying that he saw the sacks of sucrose on his tour of Unibroue.

If you're looking to brew a darker Belgian style, absolutely look into making your own carmelized sugar or use the awesome (but expensive) stuff that's being imported from Belgium in the last year or so. Otherwise, table sugar should do you just fine, the "cidery" flavor from sugar is a myth.

I used to have Brew Like a Monk but I lent it to a member who doesn't come around anymore. It's odd though - in Designing Great Beers, Ray Daniels says to keep sugars below 10%. He also says the cidery flavor doesn't come directly from the sugar, but is a by product of the yeast function. I guess right now I'm leaning towards just using table sugar as long as I can keep it under 10%. I will definitely take you up on the offer to borrow the book and I promise to take good care of it. You're going to have to wait a few months for a sample tho

Making invert sugar seems interesting... especially since I love to cook. Rob, let me know when it's done so I can come by and try some.

My track record with belgians has been spotty:

Belgian pale#1 - Pretty good but on the light side in flavor. Used 550
Belgian Pale#2 - Not very good, I tweaked the recipe some and used 570
Golden Strong - Took about 6mo before it was drinkable and it still wasn't very good. I made the belgian pale so I could use the yeast cake for this beer. I think I may have overpitched or something because the resulting beer was more phenolic than it was estery. Definitely not what I was hoping for. In hindsight I think I overpitched.

[bwarbiany]

If you like cooking, why not simply make the invert sugar yourself? Every description I've heard makes it seem *REALLY* easy, so I don't see any reason to do something (use table sugar) you're not quite comfortable with...

I put some brown sugar in my recent Tripel, which was just bottled a few days ago. I should know shortly whether it tastes right

[BrewMasterBrad]

I created an ingredients forum and moved this topic to it. These are the types of discussions that really piss me off about losing the forum database. We lost so much great information like this. Great discussion guys.

[Rezzin]

Just a quick note when it comes to mead. Using table sugar will definitely add a cidery taste which seems to be enhanced by the honey character in mead.

Also note that if you are making a cysers (apple juice and honey instead of water and honey for traditional mead) it's kind of a standard practice by some people (not me) to add raw brown sugar, muscovato sugar, panochitas (the raw Mexican sugar cones you find in the store) or turbinado sugar to enhance the cidery/apple-y flavor in the cyser.

Hope that helps,

Oskaar

Pete,

At what % amounts would you add sugar to a mead?
.....

It seems reasonable to assume that since the yeast have to work extra hard to get to the sucrose in sugar, that the by product would be some 'off/cidery' flavors. I know Pete knows a thing or two about a thing or two when it comes to mead so this makes sense. I'm just wondering if there's a common % threshold you can remain under (in general) to offer a good balance between lighting up the beer / adding off flavors.

Many have claimed to use table sugar w/o problems but maybe they were only using it for <5% of their grain bill.

Start tasting those Tripels fella's I'm looking for a goood recipe to brew!

[jward]

It seemed that one could buy fructose and glucose at mothers market.

[brahn]

I was curious so I checked Jamil's book for it's Tripel recipe. It's extract based, but it uses 19% cane sugar. If you convert it to the all grain version, it's 15% cane sugar by weight. 14 lbs Pilsner malt, 0.25 lbs Aromatic and 2.5 lbs cane sugar.

The golden strong recipe uses 26% cane sugar, again for the extract version. Converted to AG, it's 21% cane sugar (11# Pils, 3# cane sugar).

These are both award winning recipes.

[Rezzin]

I was curious so I checked Jamil's book for it's Tripel recipe. It's extract based, but it uses 19% cane sugar. If you convert it to the all grain version, it's 15% cane sugar by weight. 14 lbs Pilsner malt, 0.25 lbs Aromatic and 2.5 lbs cane sugar.

The golden strong recipe uses 26% cane sugar, again for the extract version. Converted to AG, it's 21% cane sugar (11# Pils, 3# cane sugar).

These are both award winning recipes.

Were you referring to Brewing Classic Styles? I was just checking his website after reading this post and was thinking of putting my $25 gift certificate to Amazon.com to good use.

So all those recipes are over 15% sugar... Perhaps it's simply the belgian yeast strains that do a good job of masking the cidery flavors?

[brahn]

Yea, that's in Brewing Classic Styles. There are lots of good recipes with a little information on each style in the book. It's basically a recipe book with at least one award winning recipe per BJCP style.

I think going with 15+% sugar in any non-Belgian would put you way out of style, regardless of the yeast. Seriously, I don't think you get cidery flavors from cane sugar. This has been discussed to death over at TastyBrew and that's the conclusion that I came to from reading the opinions of much better brewers than myself. We should do some experiments, though.

[Oskaar]

For mead I don't exceed 2 lbs in a 5 gallon batch. Anything above that and the hot, cidery, rummy kind of flavors come out.

Cheers,

Oskaar

[brew captain]

Take a look here...





Now doesn't that stuff look more flavorful that plain old cane sugar???

Cheers!

[dhempy]

As a matter of fact it does .. I'll have to give that a go with my next belgian brew session.

Dan