Help. I am making a recipe for a Belgian Dark Strong Ale to go into my used whiskey barrell. I think I have a great recipe but I need 36# of Amber Candi Sugar… @$6 # that isn’t going to fly by the wife. Anyone use regular old brown sugar or some other sugar that isn’t so expensive?
Thanks,
hari
You could use plain sugar (beet or cane) and adjust your grains to get color from them.
Or, there are ways to make your own candi sugar but I’ve never tried them.
For my money, and for the amount your talking about, I’d use Domino sugar from the grocery store and throw in some crystal malt or Belgian aromatic for color. Perhaps both.
I use palm sugar in mine. But like Joe says, subbing in white sugar and adding a little color with malt will be good too. Special B, caramunich, aromatic, any or all of them would work.
Brown sugar is plain white sugar with molasses added back in. That’s probably not the flavor you are looking for. I’ve made my own invert sugar from plain white (Sucrose) by boiling 1# of sugar with 1 pint of water and 1 tsp. acid (citric, ascorbic or tartaric) The heat splits the sugar into fructose and glucose. The solution turns amber-brown as it boils down - Carmelization, I suppose. Scale this up to 36# and you’re ready to go.
Good luck!
Tom - what sort of palm sugar do you use and do you feel it has a different flavor?
I’ve used just about every sugar in the baking aisle of the organic food store (demarara, sucanat, etc. etc.) and haven’t really landed on a favorite. I used sucanat recently and the results were good, but I can’t say they were any better than regular ol’ white sugar.
My last batch, I just used whatever we had in the house (Domino sugar, I believe) since I’ve become unconcerned about it.
I’m always willing to test my beliefs, though.
I get different brands so I think the source can vary, but they are from Thailand. One of them says it is from coconut palms, but it doesn’t taste coconutty. I’m not sure about the other one I have. I find the flavor to be very subtle caramel and creaminess when eaten plain. That flavor probably does not translate to the finished beer (I haven’t done an experiment), but I like using it.
I’ve used jaggery to good effect, which is an Indian palm sugar. It almost has a fudge-like flavor to it. I’ll quite happily eat it with a spoon and was served it as a after dinner food stuff in Delhi last year.
I just received some samples of D-180 syrup from candisyrup.com. The interesting thing is that unlike the darkcandi.com, candisyrup actually manufactures their own syrup. The D-180 uses a percentage of date sugar in it. I’ll be using it in my 400th batch quadrupel this weekend.
ummmm, you might want to double check the name of that website 
Darkcandi.com… I won’t be checking that from work…
darkcandi.com is safe, it goes to a place to get brewing sugars.
candisugar.com and candysugar.com are fine too, just not useful unless you want to buy real estate from Candi Schuerger or some Japanese school girl outfits.
If you’re wanting real unrefined cane juice look for jaggery (Indian groceries), demerera, turbinado, Succinat (health food stores) or piloncillo (Mexican groceries). The sugar sold ethnic groceries tends to be cheaper, but is sold in 1 kilo blocks which take a while to dissolve in the kettle. 36 lbs. of sugar would be more than most places have on hand, though. You might need to make a special order.
You streaming live? 8)
Thanks…correction made!
Negatory…
I’ve made some pretty tasty candi syrups. It’s not too hard and pretty cheap.
Denny,
Will that product be available online? Appears the website is saying June 4th. I have used the D2 candi syrup and liked the product. I made a Dubbel with it.
I really don’t know what their retail plans are. I’d advise you to contact them directly. They’re based in NC and have been very responsive and helpful for me.
It’d definitely be nice to have another source, and possibly a different quality material.
I’ve made my own too. I think the candisyrup.com syrup is in a whole different category. I made a microbatch dubbel from the D-180 I got from their promotional and it is spectacular (to say the least). In my opinion it’s far and away better than D2, (although to be fair I’m not sure DarkCandi even has a Belgian syrup like this). Just my .02 after using it.