Candi, Beet And Cane Sugar

[neonmeate]

I would be a little cautious with palm sugar; some of it has a high oil content that could be head negative.

Pre-dissolve palm sugar in some hot water, if any oily scum forms skim it off before adding the sugar syrup to your wort.

very useful post MHB, when i did chemistry in year 12 i fell asleep during all the carbon chemistry cause it was all bloody three elements. if only i had made the connection with beer.

anyway that is a good point with palm sugar. i will watch the oils.

 

[domonsura]

Sugar is used to lighten the body and to increase alcohol in beer.

Most commercial beers are between 10% and 40% sugar, mash really hot, get lots of dextrins, then make up the fermentables with sugar. Sugar and syrups should be added to the kettle about 10 minutes from the end of the boil; if for no other reason than that the lower kettle gravity increases hop utilisation.

Sugar is a useful adjunct and used judiciously can be a benefit; some styles rely on sugar as part of the flavour profile.

10-15 years ago it was "in" to use invert, to the best of my knowledge it's rarely used any more, most breweries just use plane old white sugar, or its liquid equivalent. If you see the liquid brewing sugar in supermarkets, thats what arrives at mega breweries in semi-trailer loads.

The "White" sold in Australia is generally 99.999% Sucrose, I suspect the 0.05% difference would be accounted for in any caramels in a coloured sugar.

Sugar (Sucrose) is Glucose - Fructose. Inverting breaks the bond and substitutes a water molecule where the join was. So you end up with Fructose Monohydrate and Glucose Monohydrate and a lot of sucrose that doesn't convert.

If Glucose Monohydrate looks familiar, it should, Dextrose is Dexter Rotated Glucose Monohydrate, one of the two chemically identical optical isomers.

Dextrose is 100% fermentable, Maltose the most common sugar in wort is Glucose-Glucose, inverting it or letting the yeast do the job naturally gives 2 Glucose Monohydrate, or 2 Dextrose dissolved in water.

So if you want to lighten the body of your beer, or increase the alcohol content and keep the yeasties happy little beasties, just add some dextrose, or sucrose if thats the flavour your after.

Some of the coloured, less refined sugars have interesting flavours; I use Demerara in my coffee, because I like the taste. Likewise in brewing some of the Belgian and Asian sugars add an interesting note, I would be a little cautious with palm sugar; some of it has a high oil content that could be head negative.

Pre-dissolve palm sugar in some hot water, if any oily scum forms skim it off before adding the sugar syrup to your wort.

For mine, inverting sugar is a complete waste of time; just use sugar, or better Dextrose

MHB

WOW. Heavy stuff. And everyone thinks that beer drinkers are stupid.......big fat f' all they know.
Next time I hear someone say 'Beer makes you dumb' I'm going to sic MHB on them. :lol:

 

[Stuster]

Sugar (Sucrose) is Glucose - Fructose. Inverting breaks the bond and substitutes a water molecule where the join was. So you end up with Fructose Monohydrate and Glucose Monohydrate and a lot of sucrose that doesn't convert.

For mine, inverting sugar is a complete waste of time; just use sugar, or better Dextrose

Now we've got you started could you explain this a bit. Does the yeast not invert the sucrose completely? I thought it did? :unsure:

 

[tangent]

i thought it was the stress of doing that that gives the invertase taste Pumpy?? (it's been a while though)

 

[petesbrew]

I have heard that Jaggery(Indian palm Jaggery that is) is meant to contribute a maple syrup type notes to the beer, but when I used it in an english ale, I got primarily nutty kind of flavours from it.

It probably depends a fair bit on the brand and country of origin, I would imagine.

Anyone else have their thoughts on jaggery's flavour contribution?

Cheers for the replies. It's in the Belgian Strong Ale recipe that's one of the beers for the National Brew Day, so it's good to know these things.

 

[braufrau]

i thought it was the stress of doing that that gives the invertase taste Pumpy?? (it's been a while though)

When yeast inverts sucrose, it produces those much maligned cidery tastes associated with
sucrose in beer.

MHB - liquid brewing sugar is inverted, that's why it stays a liquid, sucrose solution would crystalise.

Belgian candi sugar is made from beet sugar because sugar cane doesn't grow well in europe.

The manufacturers claim its a by product of candy making
http://www.brewlikeamonk.com/2006/04/24/be...ble-in-america/
Its approx. 50% inverted.

There's one more way to get "inverted" sugar in your brew ... just buy sucrose, fructose and glucose and
mix them 2:1:1 by mass.

-braufrau

 

[Stuster]

When yeast inverts sucrose, it produces those much maligned cidery tastes associated with
sucrose in beer.

There's a fair amount of debate about this actually. Personally, considering how many breweries (and not just mega-swill manufacturers) use standard cane or beet sugar, I'm inclined to believe that this is a myth (at least at reasonable levels).

Anyway, this might make interesting reading on the subject. Here.

 

[DJR]

There's a fair amount of debate about this actually. Personally, considering how many breweries (and not just mega-swill manufacturers) use standard cane or beet sugar, I'm inclined to believe that this is a myth (at least at reasonable levels).

Anyway, this might make interesting reading on the subject. Here.

I recently did an AIPA that was 15% cane sugar. No cideryness was present at all. If there was cidery tastes it'd be all through the flavour profiles of the big Aussie megaswills, considering how much cane they use.

 

[MHB]

There are a couple of interesting points above, to answer I have tossed in a little basic brewing chemistry (much abridged) just to clarify the basics.

There are only 4 simple sugars, these combine to make the 2.6 million known complex sugars.

The 4 simple sugars are:-
Glucose
Fructose
Galactose
Mannose

All 4 have the same molecular weight the same number of Carbon (6), Hydrogen (11) and Oxygen (5) atoms. They are all arranged in a ring of 6 Carbons with various attachments hanging off, the attachments are called functional groups, this is where the sugars join up.

Simple sugars join into chains, an Oxygen molecule forms the join, the shortest chain being 2 joined together, so: -

Glucose - O - Glucose = Maltose. 100% fermentable, most common sugar in wort, around 44%
Glucose - O - Fructose = Sucrose. 100% fermentable, usually 3-4% of wort sugars
Glucose - O - Galactose = Lactose. 0% fermentable, not naturally found in wort

In a wort we find tri-saccharides like Maltotriose

Glucose - O - Glucose - O - Glucose. This is a limit dextrin; neither Alpha nor Beta Amylase can break it down any further. Mash hotter you get more, cooler gives less

More complex sugars are formed by longer chains, Hexoses (Grenzdextrine) accounts for around 8% of wort sugars, this if formed from where chains branch.
If the chain gets long enough it becomes insoluble, then we call it starch, join up enough starches, you get cellulose, so yes a tree is made of sugar (mostly).

Back on topic; inverting is supposed to break the join ( - O - ) and put a water molecule in there, giving in the case of Maltose, 2 Glucose - water.
Yeast will do this naturally.
Well it actually just rips the whole thing to pieces and in a 12 step process that spits out 2 alcohol and 2 CO2 molecules. That's from each simple sugar, if its a disaccharide like Maltose or Sucrose, you double that.
It needs the water molecule that would go where the join is if it was inverted, as obviously 2 alcohol and 2 CO2 molecules needs 6 Oxygen's for the equation to balance and the sugar only has 5.
But we are talking wet chemistry here; there is lots of water around.
Does yeast invert sugar?
Maybe! I think it just shreds it, but yes it does break that -O- bond and uses a water molecule.

The idea that we need to hold the yeasts hand, inverting sugar that it is fully capable of eating is falling out of favour. I personally dont see any point or benefit.
Most of the inverting processes people use are less than 25% efficient, so 75% of the sugar remains as sugar. A lot of work for questionable benefits.

The argument about cindery taste from Sucrose, well the equation balances. All the sugar is used in the conversion to alcohol and CO2, there arent any "Bits" left over.
I suspect that when a mash program is designed, that relies on Sugar to make up for low levels of fermentables in a high Alpha Amylase activity mash, biased toward terminal dextrin production; the taste of the resulting beer is affected.

As to wether liquid sugar is invert or not I can't say, however, I recently found an old bottle of brewing syrup (left over from my mead making days) this is the old "Pound in a Pint" stuff, still a liquid several years later.
I suspect that evaporation or super critical conditions are required for recrystallisation.

Lastly
domonsura
Ethanol is a deadly neurotoxin, it will rot your brain, but, I have a cunning plan, drink just enough so that by the time I am too old to enjoy my vices, I will be too brain dead to remember what I am missing.

Cheers and good brewing.
MHB

 

[tangent]

well that certainly clears everything up.

 

[blackbock]

Most commercial beers are between 10% and 40% sugar, mash really hot, get lots of dextrins, then make up the fermentables with sugar. Sugar and syrups should be added to the kettle about 10 minutes from the end of the boil; if for no other reason than that the lower kettle gravity increases hop utilisation.

I already knew about commercial brewers using all that sugar, and that "diluting" wort with sugar can compensate for malts which are a bit too high in protein to a certain extent , but just reading your post it struck me that this high mash temp may be another reason that so many kit manufacturers recommend using just sugar in their "instructions", and also why those cans never seem to ferment out as fully as they should.

What do you think?

 

[SpillsMostOfIt]

I wonder how much of the tendency to avoid sugar is just brewing folklore?

One or two Belgians - who have been known to make a nice beer - use metric shed-loads of sugar.

 

[Kai]

Avoiding sugar is definitely a result of the old "kit & kilo" recommendations, the fact that "megabreweries" here use it a lot just adds emphasis. A little plain old sucrose does not do much harm though I doubt I would ever find myself using the equivalent ratio of 1kg sugar to 1.7kg extract. But, kit manufacturers themselves rarely recommend that either anymore.

 

[Stuster]

Interesting post, MHB. Thanks for the explanation. :super:

 

[Cortez The Killer]

If I'd been into brewing in high school - all that carbon chemistry would have made sooo much more sense

I've used invert sugar and sucrose in a couple of batches - and have not noticed any cidery notes

They were more prevelant in my earlier attempts when i didn't know what was going on

But it might be that as a brewer's techniques improve - like temp control / yeast selection etc - cidery / off flavours disappear

Cheers

 

[SDHBrewing]

I just made a kilo of the sugar according to Graham Sanders' method, while I am sure it aint the real deal it still worked well in the last belgian strong ale I brewed.

Worth a shot if you don't have ready access or want to pay for the real stuff.

I've made two 500g batches using Graham Sanders method and they turned out fine. I used no-name raw sugar and cooked it for a long time till it was dark red/almoust brown before tuning up the heat to finish it off. I wanted it for a dark Abbey-style Belgian Ale made from a kit, and it turned out great. I've given it to other people and they reckon it's great - nice and dark but light beer without the heavy roast taste of stouts or dark ales.

Second time the candi sugar was fine but I overhopped the beer and stuffed it up (only good for making beef and beer pies now, though I drank most of it anyway becasue it was a shame to waste all that high-alcohol beer). But the candi sugar was ok. Making your own means you can make it as light or dark as you need for the beer you're trying to brew.
:beer:

 

[blackbock]

I think a lot of brewers have come full circle with regard to sugar - it's not the evil that homebrew wholesalers would have us believe (after all if we used sugar no-one would buy their dextrose enhancers, would they?) but it's also an ingredient used with discretion: by all means use it to boost alcohol or enhance flavour, but take it easy, and remember why the Germans use only malt: That's what makes it beer!

 

[kabooby]

http://www.franklinbrew.org/brewinfo/candi_sugar.html



I just tried making the Belgian candi syrup from the franklin brew page and made a big bowl of sticky goo. Not sure how im going to get the pot clean.
Has anyone tried this with success of am I best of making the candi sugar?

Kabooby

 

[randyrob]

Hey Guys,

well i didnt have enough time to put down a brew this weekend and still wanted to do something brewing related so i made me some candi sugar, i knew there would be a post around here somewhere on the subject...

made up 3 x 500g batches here are some piccies:





i did a few batches just to see what different colours i could make

i'm going to use 1kg of the dark i made in a Golden Strong Ale

curious as to how much colour they will contribute!

Rob.

 

[Kai]

That's some sweet looking toffee, rob. I vaguely remember making that in the confectionery module at university.

Let us know how it turns out, should be great in a golden strong.