# Light Candi Crystals



## laxation (17/8/17)

Does anyone know where to get these in Aus?

Found a cool looking recipe that calls for them, but I've never even heard of them before.
Is there anything you can replace it with?


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## MHB (17/8/17)

Brewman has both Clear and Amber (order some just to taste - eat like candy) as well as the liquid some Belgian Soft sugars.
I don't think Clear Candi is necessary in most beers, but I would use it in a highend Triple.
Mark


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## technobabble66 (17/8/17)

Clever brewing also has a few options. 

https://www.cleverbrewing.com.au/catalogsearch/result/?cat=0&q=Candi


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## zensome (17/8/17)

It is really easy and WAY cheaper to make it yourself.


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## MHB (17/8/17)

zensome said:


> It is really easy and WAY cheaper to make it yourself.



You are to my mind both right and wrong! It's not hard to make partly inverted sugar at home, you cant make Belgian Candi without getting your hands on some Belgian Beet Sugar.
Saying the two are the same as saying all Pilsner malt is the same - similar yes, the same no. If they were the same there would be no German Pilsner being offered at a premium price.

Agreed as per my first post, I don't think the extra expense is necessary in most recipes, but in some it makes a world of difference.
Mark


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## laxation (17/8/17)

What is different about belgian beet sugar to regular sugar?

There's a few comparisons to cane sugar when I googled this to try and find more info about it - do you know how that would compare?

It's pretty darn expensive so would be happy with a substitute


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## MHB (17/8/17)

If you want to you can just add white sugar, no need to invert it unless the sugar is a large fraction of the gravity (say over 15%).
But it will have an effect on the outcome, if you chose the cheapest Malt, Hops and Yeast that to will have an effect on the outcome.
Without seeing the recipe its impossible to say how much effect, but if it was a Westmalle Tripel clone, the $13-14 you spend on triple yeast is not just an indulgence, its a necessary part of the beer, same with every other ingredient, including the sugar.
Mark


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## laxation (17/8/17)

I guess I'll just have to try it twice and see!


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## technobabble66 (17/8/17)

Fwiw, I've done some research into this topic [emoji57] and was surprised to find that both beet sugar and cane sugar are 99.9% the same - basically 99.9% sucrose. The 0.1% impurities might make a difference, but it seemed like a really small factor. This is also assuming the Candi Syrup/sugar manufacturers use refined beet sugar, and not the unrefined stuff that definitely would have a lot of unique/specific components. The assumption by a fair few delving into home made Candi syrup is that this is what happens. I don't have the info in front of me, so this is just from memory, but after must reading and searching I came across data from at least one major Belgian candi syrup manufacturer that they used the refined form of beet sugar. Which is (from memory) 99.9% sucrose. Which is the same as cane sugar. So at that point I stopped trying to source beet sugar, and resolved to use (the abundant) cane sugar. 
However, what I've found to be the huge difference is the heating regime the Belgians have refined over decades. I've tried quite a few various approaches. Basically it's very very hard to replicate what the professionals are doing. Think of it as similar to malting. It's all in the heating regime (assuming you have decent quality ingredients, of course). As an example, the pro's apparently heat their Amber syrup over 2-3 days(!!!), holding various temperature points. I'd guess the have some pretty impressive cookers in their manufacturing plant
TBH, I'll still have attempts at it. Just because I'm stubborn, and it's kinda fun cooking up the syrup. But I'd suggest the clear or pale stuff is more doable. Amber & darker is very very hard. Oh, it's very simple to make dark syrup. However, having tried the Amber and D2 from DarkCandi next to my several attempts, I can tell you that the homemade "simple" dark syrup will be a very poor quality version of the real thing. 

TLDR: I "disagree to agree" [emoji6] with MHB. (ie: specifics differ, but result same). The homemade stuff is a (very) poor quality version of the real thing. Clear and light might be ok, but the darker you go, the more obvious the difference. 

Fwiw, if you want clear Candi syrup, just get Lyle's Golden Syrup. I suspect it's almost identical partially inverted syrup. Coles now stock it in their "international" section.


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## MHB (17/8/17)

If you were right I would agree with you 
Two points and they both annoy the hell out of me, as someone who has studied Chemistry everything I can find says you should be right, Sugar is Sugar is Sugar... except
I can taste the difference, not in a Belgian Pale Ale maybe, but get into the pale 10%ABV Belgian's and the difference is pretty marked, even more obvious in the big dark beers but lets talk about Clear, its a noticeable difference.
There are a couple of European sugar manufacturers who also make Rum, they sell Beet Sugar and use the money to buy Cane Sugar for Rum making, because Rum made from Beet tastes like crap!
If the two sugars were the same they would behave the same.

I think Golden Syrup is a complete waste, it is partly inverted but is still cane sugar and if you are using a small amount of sugar just use sugar. Further it will add some colour and we are talking about Clear, where the point is to avoid colour.
The reasons for making invert are mainly for industrial uses, it used to be thought that invert fermented "better", that was in the 1970's, since then we have found that it makes little difference except that invert syrup doesn't recrystallise as quickly so it sits in tanks and pumps better.
The other argument was that invert triggered the release of less Invertase by the yeast which changed the way the yeast behaved.
The jury is still out on this one, personally I think a lot of Sucrose at the start will trigger a large release of invertase and can inhibit the yeasts ability to manage other Sugars - which will have flavor impacts. Golden syrup isn't fully inverted so it triggers the release of invertase and its more expensive than plain white sugar so for me it misses the target on three points. Adds Colour, Adds Cost and Doesn't prevent release of invertase.

I would haply use some white sugar in lower alcohol beers, it is a pretty important part of the makeup of quite a few well known UK pale/bitter/best... styles, would even use it in Belgian Pale Ale, for higher alcohol beers I would add the sugar part way through the ferment.
for very high alcohol Belgian beers I go to Belgian Candi, lets face it these aren't budget beers, trying to save a couple of dollars on sugar would be counterproductive (farking stupid).
Mark


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## technobabble66 (17/8/17)

MHB said:


> If you were right I would agree with you
> ..., Sugar is Sugar is Sugar... except
> ...


Not sure if you were being flippant or not , but that's definitely the not case. 
Pretty much all the other types of sugar that one could list are substantially different. 
That's why discovering that refined cane sugar and beet sugar are both 99.95% sucrose (i forgot the extra 0.05% in the earlier post).
From all of what i've read, the other sources of sugar are not remotely close to 99.95% sucrose; whereas both beet and cane refine down to that level of sucrose purity. Hence, the others are not chemically similar at all. And within the forms of Beet and Cane sugar, only the "white" versions are virtually the same (kinda stating the obvious!). Raw cane sugar is 98.5% sucrose, and the purity drops off steadily from there with colour. I can't find the data on less refined beet sugar so i'm not sure about it's composition; but i've not come across any use of less refined beet sugar - the few manufacturers I've been able to find info on seemed to use refined beet sugar. 
FWIW, of the ~0.05% impurities in the beet & cane sugars there *would* be substantial difference. It's basically all of the extra compounds from the different plants. As an example, the main amino acids in the beet sugar seem to be serine, glutamine, asparagine, glutamic & aspartic; whereas cane is the same but almost devoid of serine. Serine is noted for producing fruity, sweet, & "pleasant" flavour/aroma characteristics from maillard reactions with glucose.
I'd be inclined to think 0.05% of impurities (of which something as little as 4% might be serine in the beet sugar) are likely to produce pretty minimal differences. However, it's not entirely implausible that even such a tiny %-age could produce subtle differences that our tongues/noses could detect.

So basically i'm saying, in the grand scheme of sugar out there, the beet & cane sugars are surprisingly pretty damn close to chemically identical. So by & large, they should be producing almost identical results. However, the tiny tiny difference _might_ be enough to produce some subtle differences.

OTOH, i'd still believe by far the biggest hurdle of making the syrup is the actual manufacturing process itself. As mentioned in my earlier post, some of the info i've come across indicated the Belgians go through complex multiple heat cycles over 2-3 days. There appears to be at least a few main temperature points they target and hold them for up to several hours. It simply seems to be a much greater variable and play a more critical role in the chemistry required to make the syrup..


Mark, just out of interest, are you sure the Euro rum distillers are choosing cane sugar solely for taste characteristics and not for economics? I'm under the impression beet sugar is not very economical for large scale use compared to cane sugar from the colonies.


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## MHB (18/8/17)

technobabble66 said:


> Snip
> So basically i'm saying, in the grand scheme of sugar out there, the beet & cane sugars are surprisingly pretty damn close to chemically identical. So by & large, they should be producing almost identical results. However, the tiny tiny difference _might_ be enough to produce some subtle differences.
> 
> Snip
> ...


That's why I hate it - it should be the same - it isn't. Focusing on just the non-Sucrose parts may be a mistake it might have more to do with isomerisation...
The four basic hexoses all have the same atomic make up, all arranged in a slightly different order, even glucose comes in a couple of versions, some common in nature, others not so.
Problem we have is the same molecule is assembled by enzymes in two unrelated plants, I'm not enough of a biochemist to know just what the effect is on the way the resulting Sucrose behaves, but enough of a realist to recognise that they cant be treated as identical because there is strong evidence otherwise.
On the Rum, yes one of the distillers was having a whinge, they used just swap the beet sugar for cane sugar from Jamaica, then the EU got involved and in an attempt to make people use "Local" ingredients - screwed the pooch - as far as the distiller was concerned.

I wish you were right, problem is reality keeps intruding into what I want to have happen. I hate that, but cant change it.
Mark


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