Importance Of Sugar

Hello All. First post. Long time beer appreciator, drinker, and for the last year part brewer. Have a few brews under the belt.

But I have a question about Sugar, regarding a belgian tripel. First batch we used Candi Sugar. I understand that it is an invert sugar comprised of fructose and glucose as opposed to straight sucrose, table sugar.


What are your thoughts on using regular Sucrose instead?



Thanks guys, and amazing forum. I'm happy to be a part of this!

sucrose has a slightly unpleasant cider-y taste. I used a bunch in an apple wine and it was completely fine but in beer its not good. the easy way is to make the sucrose into candi sugar yourself, its really easy.

weigh the sugar you want, you want 1 lb candi put in 1 lb sucrose.
add a TINY BIT of water as little as possible really. you want just enough that the sugar forms a sticky hard to stir mess, not trying to dissolve it. then add a tiny bit of some time of food acid, a tablespoon of lemon juice works great. now heat the sugar, as it heats up the sucrose and the acid react and the sucrose turns into glucose and fructose, TADA! the problem is if you want to make it into hard crystalized candi sugar. to do that you have to get it really hot and poor it into something and then let it cool, which is a pain in the ass to break it and get it back out. I just make it and then poor it straight out of the pan into the boil kettle. you can google it for more exact directions which i recommend as things can go very wrong and cause a mess.

Sucrose works fine. It won't give you some of the melanoiden flavors (maybe there's caramel and raisins there too) that candy sugar gives. But it will let you bump up the ABV and dry out the belgian.

There's a great podcast (Basic Brewing Radio, I think) covering making your own candy sugar (the syrupy kind, not the kind on a stick). Worth a listen-to, just for the discussion of the qualitative values of the stuff.

Dextrose is used to make Duvel. In fact, I think a lot of it is in there. I've never tasted any cider in that. Not that I remember, anyway

passedpawn said:

There's a great podcast (Basic Brewing Radio, I think) covering making your own candy sugar (the syrupy kind, not the kind on a stick). Worth a listen-to, just for the discussion of the qualitative values of the stuff.

Dextrose is used to make Duvel. In fact, I think a lot of it is in there. I've never tasted any cider in that. Not that I remember, anyway

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both of the candi sugars are actually the exact same thing, you just have to get one a lot hotter. The taste comes from cooking longer and hotter after the sugar has already inverted, your caramelizing it. Dextrose (corn sugar) is tasteless on its own, its the flavors in the caramelized sugar like you said.

Sucrose works fine, inverts in the boil, and is what the majority of the Belgians use for sugar additions in tripels and Golden Strongs per Stan Hieronymous in Brew Like a Monk.

Right, heat and acid are required to make the sugar invert best. Guess how many of those elements your boiling wort has?

So, don't fear table sugar in quantities lower than 20%.

GuldTuborg said:

Right, heat and acid are required to make the sugar invert best. Guess how many of those elements your boiling wort has?

So, don't fear table sugar in quantities lower than 20%.

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Sorry but not quite, it needs heat and acid in the absence of water. If you boil sucrose in wort you get...sucrose dissolved in wort. I agree that lower then 20% you generally cannot taste it, but why not take about 5 min and make it on your stove? Besides if you make it on the stove first it is already hot and dissolved when you want to add it to the wort. I am not saying that I have never put lots of sucrose in a beer, cause I have, just that adding this step makes it taste a lot better.

Correction: if you boil sucrose in wort SOME of it will invert, but he majority will not.

InfiniteThought said:

Correction: if you boil sucrose in wort SOME of it will invert, but he majority will not.

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I knew it would to some degree, but not exactly how much. Oh well. I knew it was all just too easy!

In any case, the whole "cider" thing is more FUD than anything else.

thanks a bunch everyone. extremely informative and warm in response demeanor, unlike other forums i've been a part of. Brewing this Friday so i'll try and post this weekend on how it went and what we tried. Have a good weekend everyone. Prost!

InfiniteThought said:

Sorry but not quite, it needs heat and acid in the absence of water. If you boil sucrose in wort you get...sucrose dissolved in wort. I agree that lower then 20% you generally cannot taste it, but why not take about 5 min and make it on your stove? Besides if you make it on the stove first it is already hot and dissolved when you want to add it to the wort. I am not saying that I have never put lots of sucrose in a beer, cause I have, just that adding this step makes it taste a lot better.

Correction: if you boil sucrose in wort SOME of it will invert, but he majority will not.

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IME, I've found no advantage whatsoever in using invert sugar in place of table sugar.

table sugar works great. I think Houblon on here even mentioned that A'Chouffe uses table for their beers. he goes to the brewery like twice year.


it's entirely possible I made that last part up. but the 1st sentence....that's gold....

I think that table sugar adds an odd taste, just my opinion, but I know that nice invert sugar slightly darkened adds all sorts of complex deliciousness. For the 10 minutes of my time and washing one pan and one spoon, totally worth it to me. just my $.02 (thats .02 dollars, not .02 cents)

zteelchainz said:

thanks a bunch everyone. extremely informative and warm in response demeanor, unlike other forums i've been a part of. Brewing this Friday so i'll try and post this weekend on how it went and what we tried. Have a good weekend everyone. Prost!

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Let us know what you go with and good luck with the brewing! In the mean time maybe I will ferment some straight sucrose compared to some clear, non-caramelized invert sugar and see if there is a real difference and if the whole "cider taste" is BS or not...hmmm...my scientist roots are showing.

Just add table sugar to the boil or even directly to the fermentor (undissolved even). For a tripel, you don't want to add color by making candy syrup/sugar. 20% sugar would be fine for a tripel. I add sugar to the fermentor after fermentation is vigorous, so the yeast are favoring the maltose before going after the sucrose.

InfiniteThought said:

I think that table sugar adds an odd taste, just my opinion, but I know that nice invert sugar slightly darkened adds all sorts of complex deliciousness. For the 10 minutes of my time and washing one pan and one spoon, totally worth it to me. just my $.02 (thats .02 dollars, not .02 cents)

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What kind of blind testing have you done to reach this conclusion?

IME, table sugar works just fine. I have made my own invert sugar as well in in the exact same recipe in the exact same quantities for a belgian tripel I can tell no discernable difference. I no longer make invert sugar, but always keep sacks of table sugar handy.

permo said:

IME, table sugar works just fine. I have made my own invert sugar as well in in the exact same recipe in the exact same quantities for a belgian tripel I can tell no discernable difference. I no longer make invert sugar, but always keep sacks of table sugar handy.

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I guess that settles it, seems I had a fear of table sugar trained into me. I am still going to ferment a split batch at some point where 1/2 has table sugar and 1/2 batch has inverted. Must say, a wonderful debate.

InfiniteThought said:

sucrose has a slightly unpleasant cider-y taste. I used a bunch in an apple wine and it was completely fine but in beer its not good. the easy way is to make the sucrose into candi sugar yourself, its really easy.

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Don't know where you got your info from but you are WAY off base if you think sucrose is going to turn your beer into cider!

um, I never said that it was going to turn beer into cider...I said that it gave a slight cidery taste. I didn't use it to flavor the apple wine, I used apples for that.

InfiniteThought said:

um, I never said that it was going to turn beer into cider...I said that it gave a slight cidery taste. I didn't use it to flavor the apple wine, I used apples for that.

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But it doesn't give the beer a "slight cidery taste", either. I've used sugar in a lot of beers (mainly Belgian and IIPA) and never gotten a hint of cider from it.

What Denny said!

Denny said:

IME, I've found no advantage whatsoever in using invert sugar in place of table sugar.

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I use a lot of darker invert sugar in my bitters for color, so that's one advantage that invert has over table sugar. I won't try to say that it makes a difference in taste, in fear of being labelled as an heretic though. I'll reserve my judgement on this matter for myself

Fwiw, I brewed Gordon Strongs Tripel in his new book, 3lbs of white beet sugar, no cider at all.

I can't stand Belgians, but others love it.

dead horse, beating, etc...

InfiniteThought said:

Let us know what you go with and good luck with the brewing! In the mean time maybe I will ferment some straight sucrose compared to some clear, non-caramelized invert sugar and see if there is a real difference and if the whole "cider taste" is BS or not...hmmm...my scientist roots are showing.

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ayeee...sorry for the delay but had a rough hiatus outside of the brew world...but back and feeling good.

as for the sugar we went with the sucrose from the finest Domino Sugar money can buy...everything went well though.

the fermenter is blasting off like Ghostbuster's pink slime. so the yeasties must be loving life right now...

heres a few pics too...


Thats the grain grain...and 2 glasses of what we are brewing...from a previous brew.



thats the set up (minus conical...3rd blichmann on the way!)




anddd thats me... (takes a lot of beer to make beer )






All in all, a great night...that wasn't the beer by the way. Some roughians from Florida came up and were throwing around flaming shots.
My last memory was right around boil!

viva los robots!