After a few failed attempts at making my own Belgian candi sugar, I am trying to do a quick order. However, all I can find are corn syrup products. Anyone got a good line on the real deal? I’m doing a dubbel so I’d love something with good depth. Thanks.
Edit: just as good would be someone telling me how to remedy my process. Everything goes well until it gets to 275°F and the lime in it, and it suddenly crystallizes and dries out. Adding water back to it does not help. Of course, I cannot get the sugar to crack temperature that way.
Hey, I haven’t used the corn syrup products - but my issue with them from what I’ve read is not simply “corn syrup = BAD” but they are simple sugars largely differentiated by how much of a small amount of darkening agent is added to each, nothing like the CSI candi syrup.
CSI Candi syrup stopped selling to the brewing and homebrewing industries sometime about a year or more ago. So it’s over.
make it yourself the proper way - sounds like youre doing that - and thats how far i had gotten but i didnt add in water after. i take your data point on that potentially not working hmm.
Raw sugars are what I want to try next - muscovado, jaggery etc.
i have 2.5lb of D180 but i also want to try 2lbs of the darkest and rawest muscovado in a beer soon and just see how it works
also: "Date Palm Jaggery (Khajoor Gur): A seasonal winter specialty famously used in Bengali sweets. It is darker and more brittle. It brings a highly unique dark chocolate, dark dried fruit (fig/plum), and deep earthy character to a beer. "
there are a variety of date sugars in granular and liquid forms.
Candico uses corn syrup. I’ve tried it and wouldn’t recommend it. But I thought the OP was asking about candi sugar, not candi syrup.
I went to 19 Belgian breweries a year ago on a quest to learn about the sugars they use. What I discovered was that they use any and all. I saw bags of table sugar, I saw rocks, I saw syrup. My takeaway is use what you’ve got.
What bottle is this? I haven’t actually seen this product in homebrew packaging but my understanding is that it’s the same stuff you find it all the grocery stores in the Netherlands for your pancakes
this is what i think my interest is - these breweries use commercial-scale ingredients not candi syrup. I feel like at its root somehow is the rawest commodity sugar that is cheaper than white sugar/sucrose turned into something.
semi but unrelated to any of this - it will not be my next brew, but some time i really want to try very raw muscovado boiled in water for 30 mins beside the main brew, then added in at flameout. im basing this on a bunch of thrown together “research” , not expecting D180 or D90 - something different but I will just have to see
Which breweries? Certainly NOT the ones in Belgium! I saw bags of white and brown sugar, bags of rocks, jugs and barrels of syrup. One of my main objectives on the last trip was to explore the sugars they use. The answer is any and all.
And you wouldn’t believe the things I found out about yeasts!
originally some dark syrup but good tasting byproduct that was not molasses from beet sugars being industrially processed for sucrose. (one method but complicated and requires massive scale and time)
CSI tries to emulate this any way they can on a smaller micro and homebrewing industry basis - uses date sugars for flavour in at least D180 and D240 and a different method to drive melanoidins in all products
2 of the most popular and respected breweries, one Trappist and one farmhouse, use American and English ale yeast. They may also pitch another yeast with more character, but not always.
Williams Brewing sells Amber and Dark syrup from Candico, and on page 6 of the Product Data sheet, they claim, “All our sugars are produced from beet and cane sugar.”
would you be willing to share what you found out about the yeasts?
Wow so much for it being all about the yeast.