Full flavored and strong yet dry and quaffable, many Belgian beer styles hit all of these marks with the use of one key ingredient: sugar! For centuries, Belgian brewers have been adding sugar to their beer, often in syrup form, to push attenuation while adding unique flavors. While commercial options are great, they tend to be pricey, though many brewers have discovered DIY syrup to be cheap and relatively easy. But how does it compare to the fancy stuff? We tested it out and the results are in!
Great write up.
My opinion has always been that it is just not worth the time, effort and potential mess to make DIY syrup.
My LHBS the whole CSI line, with the syrups costing only $5.95 p/lb. I get enough of a stink eye from my better half for brewing in the kitchen so the last thing I need is dangerous chemicals, sticky sugar, etc.
I made a Marshall 18w clone back in the day and when I was done I tally’d up the time, materials and effort and was disappointed because the production model was cheaper and sounded better.
The best part of this, to me, was the group that selected the correct one 9 out of 10 times. While admittedly under less than strict controls, this touches on a thought I’ve always had regarding someone who has a well-calibrated palate for a style. I think that even though an xBmt may show a non-significant result for the average craft beer enthusiast, someone who has a lot of experience with a particular style may indeed reliably detect a more minute difference.
That said, this almost has me wanting to experiment with making my own Candi Syrup. Almost.
My thoughts on hobbies is that if you’re looking to make something better you will be disappointed. My goal is to make something good, different, and mine - which is much more attainable.
Props on the amp, though. I’ve always wanted to make my own stomp boxes, but a full amp would be way out of my league.
Something to consider is that we never gauged this group’s level of experience or palate calibration, they were just a few of the participants Greg happened to be hanging out with after the survey was complete. Since we don’t track or report the performance of specific people (for anonymity’s sake), there’s no way to say whether these people were correct on the triangle or not. On numerous occasions, definitely multiple times per xBmt, I’ll be chatting with someone after they take the survey who swears they picked the odd-beer-out in the triangle once the variable is revealed, but when I check, they actually selected one of the similar samples. This isn’t to say they’re overtly lying, just that we do interesting things psychologically to validate ourselves, often out of our own awareness.
All of this to say, as cautious as I recommend people approach interpreting the triangle test data, I believe it’s even more imperative to do so when interpreting anything that comes after that… particularly when the results fail to achieve statistical significance.
Great write-up!
Perhaps the commercial sugar is made in copper kettles? Would that have an impact in the final product? And how would the sodium hydroxide play with that?
Maybe I missed it, but did you ask them which one they preferred? What I got out if it was that they could tell the homemade becasue the beer wasn’t as good. Is that correct?
I know that the syrup from candisyrup.com is not made in copper kettles.
Statistically, since this failed to achieve significance, any preferences can be viewed as meaningless. That said, it was evenly split among those who were correct on the tri test. According to Greg, the 10 tasters who did the later comparison tended to prefer the homemade syrup beer, opposite of Greg’s preference.
Isn’t Westvleteren XII made with the dark syrup which consists of both beet sugar and date sugar?
The reason the dark stuff is so difficult to make at home is that the date sugar contains a lot more solids besides the actual sugar. This is dealt with on a commercial level by using a centrifuge to separate the resulting syrup from the solids.
I’ve tried to make the dark stuff at home using both types of sugars and straining it through filter paper after slightly cooled (didn’t work at all…) and a fine stainless mesh screen which worked ok, however it was still too “burnt”.
Haven’t had the time to pursue it further perhaps sometime in the future however without a centrifuge I’m not sure how to separate the solids from the syrup.
I believe it’s Beet Sugar or a Cane Sugar depending on the market over there.
All of the Trappists, and Belgian Brewers in general, are likely a lot less picky than we are over here. They probably get what’s available from the suppliers and call it a day.
We don’t have date palms in Belgium so I’m pretty sure it’s only beet sugar 
This why I love having an insider from the mothership!
No sugar cane either. Plenty of beets in Europe.
You can’t import from Spain and North Africa? Or Indonesia, via the Dutch if you want it to be more traditional…
But some of the largest culinary and beverage sugar product manufacturers are in Belgium so there is undoubtedly little difficulty finding imported sugar sources.
http://www.darkcandi.com/d2.html
D-2 = beet sugar
Says 80SRM should be 160SRM - unless it’s a different product. Not sure of European regulations for product ingredients labeling.
D-180 = beet sugar, date sugar, water
Used in their Westvleteren XII clone recipe.
How do the monks do it?
Westvleteren is pretty closed lipped on thier recipes and methods.
They boil a long time, how long I don’t know, but according to BLAM: “…at least 60 minutes…”
They use “dark sugar” and “dark malts” to achieve the color and flavor but are pretty secretive about it as well as their water treatment.
Personally I like how “cloak and dagger” they are about it. Makes for interesting discussion and speculation.
Are the terms “dark sugar” and “dark malts” in BLAM?
I’m sure even the monks have changed the sugars they use (if they do it themselves) or even the vendors they source from over the years. In fact, I recall reading/listening somewhere that they received complaints the quality of the beer was declining and had to revisit their processes.
I know in the bottom of a Rochefort 10 bottle there are always the dark chunks of yeast, perhaps darkened by the sugar and malts, etc…
Yup. That was the phrase used in reference to the color and flavor of their beers.