I’m working on a Belgian golden strong ale, and someone recommended that I add the rock candi sugar at high krausen. Thoughts on this? Any general advice on this style? Thank you.
Adding simple sugars during fermentation is a way to avoid a stuck fermentation and ensure the beer dries out. That said, I’m not sure that is done by many commerical breweries known for the style.
If you are going to do it I wouldn’t recommend adding rocks of sugar to the beer because the rocks might not fully dissolve. You could boil them in a small amount of water to make a syrup.
Also not sure I see a reason to buy the more expensive rock sugar or clear candi sugar over using regular table sugar.
I add sugar to the boil. I have found no advantage to adding it during fermentation. Rock sugar has no advantage over table sugar and is much more expensive.
On my last beer I added candi syrup to the fermenter three days after fermentation started simply because the mfr recommended it.
I have not used their products before so I have no experience with it and figured their recommendation was as good as any.
I reasoned that since the syrup I used was flavored, possibly they recommended this because the flavor wouldn’t survive boiling.
I guess I’ll find out when the beer is ready.
One advantage of adding sugar after 3 days is the initial yeast pitch can be lower since the O G at that point is less.
This is my thought as well. By the time you’re ready to add the sugar you’ll have a lot more yeast working.
You may be able to learn from a mistake I recently made though. Adding granulated sugar to wort that is still fermenting can create a volcano.
I think it’s one of those things that turns out to be more theoretical than actual. You may have more yeast working, but does it matter?
I am not sure about the number of yeast that are active, but I have typically added the sugar a few days into fermentation, with the thought being - it is a bigger beer (at least on the scale of beers I typically brew), so an early addition could cause the yeast to peter out on metabolizing the more complex sugars remaining in solution and saving the most simple sugar addition until this late in the process would seem to enable/help push for the metabolization of those complex sugars before getting to the “dessert” (simple sugars).
I appreciate that this is purely anecdotal, but I find it akin to asking the kids to finish their meal before getting dessert. (How many would go back to finish the meal, if given dessert up front?) I know, I know, that is some strange anthropomorphism.
So I’m hearing dont waste my money on candi sugar but no definitive thoughts on whether to add in boil or at krausen.
Thoughts on turbinado sugar? A couple of recipes call for conditioning this beer in bottles at very low temps for several weeks. If I do that, how do the bottles carbonate?
My guess is the very low temps would come after the bottles are carbed.
I’m with Denny. I always add the sugar or Candisyrup during the boil and I have never seen a benefit of using rock sugar over table sugar. I used rock sugar many years ago because recipes called for it, but I never got any flavor from it. I also used the Clear Candisyrup and didn’t get any flavor from it that I could tell.
I haven’t heard of keeping bottle conditioned cold after bottling and it sounds like some nonsense. You can always keep it cold after it’s carbonated.
Leave them at room temp til they carb, then cold condition.
Agreed on all points. However, I do think the darker syrups are worthwhile, but obviously not for a Golden Strong.
It’s been years since I tried turbinado, but used in enough quantity you’ll get a small flavor differential vs. plain table sugar, IIRC. I went through a period of trying every different kind of sugar I could find. I did not find the more expensive raw sugars to be worth it for what little differentiation they brought to the party.
Yeah, the candi syrups are great.