Getting conflicting info on SRM, flavor, etc.
Anyone have any experience using this?
What is the flavor like?
It is a good substitute for Brewers invert 1. It works fine in many bitter recipes. It can add a little butterscotch taste, not diacetyl.
To me, it tastes kinda buttery. Like when maple syrup mixes with butter on a waffle? Reminiscent of that, to me anyway. Maybe a bit honey like? I don’t have a can open at the moment or I’d try it again.
If I remember, Beersmith lists is as 0 SRM. It’s very pale, in the tin (in syrup form) I’d say it’s well under 10 SRM
I use it now and then in British Ales that call for invert sugar. I’m not convinced that there’s any flavor impact beyond table sugar, but I don’t know that I’ve used it in any recipes where I’d pick out a difference. I’ve almost always used it in recipes that are either big barleywines, or have a significant amount of English crystal malt along with it.
It looks like honey, but I can’t imagine that it would affect color in any significant way.
It looks so much darker in the jars.
Buttery/butterscotch likely won’t jive for what I was thinking of using it for.
I’ve heard it rumored that Chimay uses it but haven’t seen anything solid to that point.
I wonder if it shares any similar attributes to CSI D45
My understanding is that candi syrup uses beet sugar, whereas proper British invert sugar uses raw cane sugar as the base.
True but that doesn’t really say much about flavor.
At least to me. My taste buds aren’t refined enough to pick out the flavor of beet sugar over cane sugar in a finished syrup.
I’d venture to say that continental Syrup makers in Belgium use the sugar base that offers the best bulk price. I don’t think they market as hard as the CSI folks do with respect to the whole beet vs. cane thing.
Thanks for the response.
Sugar beets are grown in Belgium. The British had a good supply of cane sugar from Barbados, going back to the days of the empire.
My understanding is that typically beet sugar is significantly cheaper than cane sugar.
As far as telling the difference in taste, I’d imagine simple syrups made from highly refined cane and beet sugars would be indistinguishable from each other.
True in the US, as we have high import duties on cane sugar. Not so true in the rest of the world.
Lyles is cheap in the UK.
I used Lyle’s in a bitter recently. Pretty sure I could taste it, though I used a yeast I’m not familiar with, too, so it could be the yeast.
It’s nothing like D-45. It’s extremely light in color.
I do believe it imparted flavor but I’ll have to tap the keg to confirm.
Ok, I’ve got an update on this.
The recipe I brewed was 68.6% pale ale malt, 14.9% flaked barley, and 16.5% invert #3. The invert #3 was made by mixing Lyle’s syrup with blackstrap molasses, following the directions here:
http://www.unholymess.com/blog/beer-brewing-info/making-brewers-invert
After getting less efficiency than I had expected, and miscalculating my boil off during a 3-hour boil, I ended up with 4 gallons of 1.045 wort.
What’s got me is this beer has a definite caramel/toffee flavor to it. I’ve never noticed this from regular pale ale malt before. If I didn’t know better I’d think there was crystal malt in the beer, but this beer doesn’t have any of that cloying sweetness/syrupiness/mouth feel of caramel malt.
I think that unholymess is pretty much crock on making invert. Ron Parkinson’s guide to making vintage beers has better instructions.
FWIW, I found unholymess’s directions via one of Pattinson’s recipes…that being said, I did the “mix with invert” rather than “make your own invert” approach. I feel like that’s likely the better approach for those who can’t source “real” invert #3, or whatever.
I tried to make some #3 with the unholymess directions via Ron’s recipe’s too. I think most of it is based on Kris England’s instructions. It was pretty hard to get it to darken, even at higher temperatures than suggested. I think I ended up with #2. The beer was delicious though.