astrivian:
According to How to Brew, yeast can lose their ability to ferment maltose (from the malt) if there is too much simple sugar in the beer. The limit the author gave for sugar was 30% of the total OG for the wort. For five gallons, 30% is a whole lot of sugar. I added 2 pounds to some of my higher gravity beers with no issues (got 80% AA).
Personally, i like corn sugar because it just adds to ABV without doing much else (i pretty much only do high gravity beers). Adding a pound or two of sugar cuts down on the malt you need by a bit. For light beers like trippels or golden ales, i always add sugar at the very end of the boil so it doesn’t change the color of the beer. For darker beers, i liked adding at the beginning of the 90 minute boil for the same reasons mentioned on this thread.
I used dark candi sugar syrup once for a dubbel but i messed up other aspects of the beer so i couldn’t tell what it was actually like. The sugar tasted good though
you can save a little money by just using table sugar in place of corn sugar. not really much difference there. I have never been able to tell the difference. I have not used candi sugar so I can’t speak to that though.