beet molasses vs dark candi syrup

Hello!

I am in the process of making a quad,and naturally I will need dark candi syrup. I want to make it myself and I am willing to dedicate time and energy to acheive it. I do have one big problem. It seems there is no accepted way of truly replicating this at home. I have seen recipes, but they either produce insufficient flavor or fermentability. So I have done some research on what the syrup actually ist, at least what is revealed, but I have ended up a bit confused.

As far as I have understood, the dark syrup(DS) is at least a byproduct from belgian sugar beet refinement. Going a bit deeper, I read that it is most likely the syrup remaining after the beet juice has undergone carbonatation and the juice has been boiled and as much pure sucrose had been crystallized out of the syrup as possible. The dark colour and taste of this product seems to be a result of mainly Malliard reactions between sugars and amino acids from the beet proteins created during boiling and cooling of the syrup,as well as aromatic and tasteful remnants/residuals of the beet. At the same time though, I have read several places that this syrup is in fact known as beet molasses. And I have also read that dark candi syrup and molasses definately does not taste the same. I do know there is significant difference between cane and beet molasses, but I have not tasted them myself.

So my questions are as follows:
1. Is beet molasses and dark candi syrup the same thing?
2. if not, what is the difference?
3. How can I most accurately make the syrup at home without compromising either taste or fermentability.

I am familiar with methods involving both DAP, different sugars, acids, bases and temperatures, but as far as I know none of these are comparable enough to the real deal. Rochefort 10 has been my holy grail for the past 3 years, and if I can come close to reproducing it on my own I would be infinately grateful! Thank you in advance for your help!

I forgot to ask for one last thing. Is the reduced fermentability because of maillard or caramelization? If its the latter, could a solution be to keep the temperature lower, but for an extended time period, to maximize maillards and reduce pyrolysis? Thanks again!

anyone?

bump

They aren't the same.

Molasses is a byproduct of the sugar manufacturing process. Dark candi syrup is sugar boiled and carmelized with water and a small amount of citric or lactic acid. The longer you cook the sugar water, the darker it becomes.

If you are making dark candi syrup, try using date sugar in addition to beet sugar. The date sugar adds a nice flavor that may be closer to what you want. I suppose you could add some molasses to your syrup too, but I haven't tried that.

I didn't think candi syrup was carmelized. Isn't the color from maillard reactions?

I've made invert sugar a few times. Boil it in water with citric acid (even lime juice will suffice in a pinch) for several hours while you brew and add it to the wort late in the boil.

I can tell you from the book "Brew Like a Monk" that the Trappist recipes do call for a dark syrup and not the rock candi sugar you hear about. In 1978 Dave Line came up with a recipe for what appears to be a Chimay Red clone. Due to the ingredients available at the time, he found best luck using brown sugar and honey in the boil, FWIW. Granted we're nearly 40 years later now.

Also from BLoM: Rochefort uses (in addition to plain sucrose) a dark sugar that while it translates to "brown sugar" isn't what you think. Candico in Antwerp produces the "sonade brune" and describes it as "granulated crystals obtained from cooling down strongly concentrated sucrose-solutions boiled at very high tmperatures"...sounds like invert to me.

StMarcos said:

I didn't think candi syrup was carmelized. Isn't the color from maillard reactions?

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Maillard reactions require amino acids.

Candi syrup is carmelized sugar with some citric acid.

candisyrup.com said:

D-180 is our premium extra dark Belgian Candi Syrup. It has the unmistakable flavors of fresh ground coffee, dark fruit, and toasted bread. D-180 is the basis for delicious dark high gravity Ale's like Westvleteren 12, Rochefort 10, and many others. When you consider brewing specialty ales like these, consider the more authentic end result, superior flavor, darker color, and excellent fermentability of D-180.

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Contents: Beet sugar, Date sugar, water.

Specifications: SRM - 180, PPG - 1.032

http://www.candisyrup.com/products.html

mistertipsy said:

contents: Beet sugar, date sugar, water.

specifications: Srm - 180, ppg - 1.032

http://www.candisyrup.com/products.html

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i love that stuff!

I've used the 180, 90 and 45. All of them are great. They have some good recipes on their site too. Including yours!

http://www.candisyrup.com/recipes.html

Denny's 400th - Belgian Quad
This Belgian Quad was provided to us by Denny Conn who graciously shared his recipe with us after using our D-180 Candi Syrup.

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Trust me when I say this. I have done extensive internet and book research, and most importantly tried every variation of caramellizing and inverting different sugars at many different temperatures, with and without nitrogen donors. They never have the same flavor or fermentability as d-180.

When I talket to a brewer at cantillon in brussel, he said that from one of their beers, they used caramel from westmalle. And he said this was made from leftover profucts and sugar from beet refinement.

I have seen posts like these a million times, but they are still wrong. You do NOT get the intense and right flavor profile and more importantly a satisfactory dry fermentability, from cooking sugar at different temperatures with aminos or acids. To acheive a strong enough flavor using this method, you are left with too many converted unfermentable sugars to acheive the dry complexity of the traditinal dark strongs like rochefort10.

But i must say, the guys from candisyrup seems to have cracked the code. I don't intent to be rude, but we need some fresh input to have any chance of making a comparable product at home. And as a homebrewer who loves quads, this seems to be the missing link, and a challenge worth pursuing!

MisterTipsy said:

I've used the 180, 90 and 45. All of them are great. They have some good recipes on their site too. Including yours!

http://www.candisyrup.com/recipes.html

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They do make a great product. I also have used them all....yumm.

callemann said:

Trust me when I say this. I have done extensive internet and book research, and most importantly tried every variation of caramellizing and inverting different sugars at many different temperatures, with and without nitrogen donors. They never have the same flavor or fermentability as d-180.

When I talket to a brewer at cantillon in brussel, he said that from one of their beers, they used caramel from westmalle. And he said this was made from leftover profucts and sugar from beet refinement.

I have seen posts like these a million times, but they are still wrong. You do NOT get the intense and right flavor profile and more importantly a satisfactory dry fermentability, from cooking sugar at different temperatures with aminos or acids. To acheive a strong enough flavor using this method, you are left with too many converted unfermentable sugars to acheive the dry complexity of the traditinal dark strongs like rochefort10.

But i must say, the guys from candisyrup seems to have cracked the code. I don't intent to be rude, but we need some fresh input to have any chance of making a comparable product at home. And as a homebrewer who loves quads, this seems to be the missing link, and a challenge worth pursuing!

Click to expand...

May I just say....

Right-freakin'-on!!!!!

tre9er said:

I've made invert sugar a few times. Boil it in water with citric acid (even lime juice will suffice in a pinch) for several hours while you brew and add it to the wort late in the boil.

.

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This is what I would use. I use inverted sugar rocks all the time. I buy 8-12 pounds of sugar and have an evening where I make inverted sugar in different colors. The clear is a great addition to IPA's, Tripels..etc..etc..

The darker shades take more time and effort but add a deep caramel flavor that is not duplicated by anything else.

Bring the sugar with a pinch of citric acid up to 275 degrees and hold it there until you get the color you need. Stirring constantly and adding a little water to control temp. Then when the color is where you want it, bring it to 300 degrees and pour it on a baking sheet. Let it cool overnight then crack it up and bag it! awesome stuff. The smells coming from the dark candi sugar while you are cooking it are sublime. Heck, I am making some tonight.

Are you using a pressure cooker? How are you heating to those temps?

tre9er said:

Are you using a pressure cooker? How are you heating to those temps?

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Adding sugar allows for higher temps.

Check out "Sugar stages" halfway down:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candy

TyTanium said:

Adding sugar allows for higher temps.

Check out "Sugar stages" halfway down:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candy

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So when I'm boiling sugar, I'm actually far above 212? Never measured temps, just looked for bubbling.

Wow, I kind of ran into a buzzsaw on this one I guess. However, I have not experienced fermenatibility issues with dark inverted sugar at all and I have made some that were a deep brown. While I have no doubt that what I am making is not %100 the same as they use in belgium, either is the water, the hops, or the yeast that we are using. I highly doubt the brewers at Rochefort all consulting whitelabs or wyeast.........


"So when I'm boiling sugar, I'm actually far above 212? Never measured temps, just looked for bubbling."

yes sir, it takes a lot of heat to get a big mass of sugar up to 275 for a long period of time.

Yes, I know many people are boiling sugar, acids and aminos at different times and temps and gets interesting and flavorful results. But this is not what I am after.

I want to make a belgian strong dark, with a comparable flavor profile too the trappists so many of us love (or worship), and please believe me when I say this: Boiling sugar with dap, acids or similar at different temps does not give no where near the low f.g dryness, complexity and unique characteristics the monks get, or you get with the commercial syrups(d180 eg).

What do these people actually do to produce syrups of this quality? I am completely sure that someone on this forum sits on this information, but it seems either to be a well guarded commercial secret, or an operation impossible to acheive wihtout industrial means. I would be forever grateful if anyone with some real background on this ingredient could shed some light! Again, please do not mistake my desperation for rudeness.

Just a side note, the Monks in most of the Trappist breweries are little more than high-level overseers at this point, as verified by Stan Hieronymous who has spent extensive time at the monasteries. They are now mostly run by commercial-minded types, as the income is important to the monks. It's now a profit machine. I'm not saying they don't make great beer, but it's been confirmed that most of them have been cutting corners for years now in order to maximize profits. Rochefort uses plain sucrose as well as dark syrup. Chimay uses hop jelly exclusively. And fermentation times and such have been sped-up to get the beer out quicker.

Just something to keep in mind. I tend to feel that the yeast and water are the two most distinctive things that make Trappist beer.

I have always wondered if there is much difference between the Invert sugar used for English beers and belgian candi sugar. There is a method for making Invert by mixing molasses and golden syrup here:
http://www.unholymess.com/blog/beer-brewing-info/making-brewers-invert

Not sure if this is what you are looking for.

callemann said:

Yes, I know many people are boiling sugar, acids and aminos at different times and temps and gets interesting and flavorful results. But this is not what I am after.

I want to make a belgian strong dark, with a comparable flavor profile too the trappists so many of us love (or worship), and please believe me when I say this: Boiling sugar with dap, acids or similar at different temps does not give no where near the low f.g dryness, complexity and unique characteristics the monks get, or you get with the commercial syrups(d180 eg).

What do these people actually do to produce syrups of this quality? I am completely sure that someone on this forum sits on this information, but it seems either to be a well guarded commercial secret, or an operation impossible to acheive wihtout industrial means. I would be forever grateful if anyone with some real background on this ingredient could shed some light! Again, please do not mistake my desperation for rudeness.

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There is definitely strong disagreement about how those dark candy syrups are made. I am absolutely in the camp that the stuff made in Belgium is not just boiled refined beet sugar in some super secret vacuum boiler with some acid or amino acids. Yes, you can make tasty stuff on your stove going either the caramelization route or maillard route but it's always missing that something in the flavor.

Beet molasses is not a food product. It has a lot of ash in it so it's very bitter. Like the final product of sugar cane processing, it's used as animal feed. However, it seems like there are some unrefined beet sugar products out there. I believe there is a dark beet sugar product that is used as a spread on breads and sometimes in cooking that you can find in Germany that, as best I can tell, is very similar to dark candy syrup. I think it's available in other countries as well.

The most compelling argument against the super secret vacuum boiled product is that brewing literature in the 19th century talks about using these beet sugar products to get darker beers and flavors in both Belgium and England. Some of those may refer to brewer's caramel and other color-treating syrups but some seem to refer to something similar to present-day dark candy syrups. The abbeys didn't have vacuum boilers. They were using what was available to them. That would have been refined or unrefined sugar. That doesn't mean there may not be some heat processing involved but probably not anything too high tech.

Another good reason is it's inefficient. The early stages of sugar processing have a lot of amino acids and nutrients that help form those delicious flavors when they get heated in the boil kettle or concentrating to create syrup. If you strip those out to refine the sugar then it's wasteful to add them back in. Instead, you can use an unrefined sugar and just apply heat to activate the existing amino acids and nutrients. To create maillard reactions you need nitrogen and amino acids. Guess what unrefined sugars are full of...

Want the inside story? Email Stan Hieronymous.

callemann said:

I have seen posts like these a million times, but they are still wrong. You do NOT get the intense and right flavor profile and more importantly a satisfactory dry fermentability, from cooking sugar at different temperatures with aminos or acids...

But i must say, the guys from candisyrup seems to have cracked the code. I don't intent to be rude, but we need some fresh input to have any chance of making a comparable product at home. And as a homebrewer who loves quads, this seems to be the missing link, and a challenge worth pursuing!

Click to expand...

You are correct. It's more a series of physical processes. The flavor profiles are notably different for each style and the process is different for each as well. In deference to online and in-print recipes, it cannot be performed in a home kitchen...e.g. no magical recipe using shortcut chemicals.

callemann said:

I am completely sure that someone on this forum sits on this information, but it seems either to be a well guarded commercial secret, or an operation impossible to acheive wihtout industrial means. I would be forever grateful if anyone with some real background on this ingredient could shed some light! Again, please do not mistake my desperation for rudeness.

Click to expand...

Yes, the process is guarded somewhat but the financial bar is the most prohibitive. Cannot be done on a small scale or in a home kitchen.

tre9er said:

just a side note, the monks in most of the trappist breweries are little more than high-level overseers at this point, as verified by stan hieronymous who has spent extensive time at the monasteries. They are now mostly run by commercial-minded types, as the income is important to the monks. It's now a profit machine. I'm not saying they don't make great beer, but it's been confirmed that most of them have been cutting corners for years now in order to maximize profits. Rochefort uses plain sucrose as well as dark syrup. Chimay uses hop jelly exclusively. And fermentation times and such have been sped-up to get the beer out quicker.

Just something to keep in mind. I tend to feel that the yeast and water are the two most distinctive things that make trappist beer.

Click to expand...

+1

callemann said:

Yes, I know many people are boiling sugar, acids and aminos at different times and temps and gets interesting and flavorful results. But this is not what I am after.

I want to make a belgian strong dark, with a comparable flavor profile too the trappists so many of us love (or worship), and please believe me when I say this: Boiling sugar with dap, acids or similar at different temps does not give no where near the low f.g dryness, complexity and unique characteristics the monks get, or you get with the commercial syrups(d180 eg).

What do these people actually do to produce syrups of this quality? I am completely sure that someone on this forum sits on this information, but it seems either to be a well guarded commercial secret, or an operation impossible to acheive wihtout industrial means. I would be forever grateful if anyone with some real background on this ingredient could shed some light! Again, please do not mistake my desperation for rudeness.

Click to expand...

We are presently exporting our products to the EU. Both Belgian and Dutch brewers have found our products to be well-suited to their brewing styles. If you are an EU customer looking to trial our product you can find one of our resellers here:

http://www.brouwmarkt.nl/brouw-suikers-c-208_8218.html

CSI said:

You are correct. It's more a series of physical processes. The flavor profiles are notably different for each style and the process is different for each as well. In deference to online and in-print recipes, it cannot be performed in a home kitchen...e.g. no magical recipe using shortcut chemicals.

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I LOVE your products, as you well know!

Denny said:

I LOVE your products, as you well know!

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Thank you Denny!

CSI said:

Thank you Denny!

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Well, I should be thanking you guys!

I'd also like to plug CSI, I'm a pro brewer and I use their stuff for quite a few different beers. D-180 is my jam. Their customer service is top-notch, too.

rexbanner said:

I'd also like to plug CSI, I'm a pro brewer and I use their stuff for quite a few different beers. D-180 is my jam. Their customer service is top-notch, too.

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Thank you Rex! I will pass this on to rest of the team. It will mean a lot to them