20 lb of sugar and a jar of yeast nutrient

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Mahogany (300F)
-Mahogany, more brown than red in color. Raisins and figs with some mild bitterness developing. There is a tart sweetness, and a loss of complex caramel flavors. The caramels are replaced by bittersweet toast and burnt sugar characters. It is rich and decadent but not as complex as 290F.
2 Lbs Sugar
1 Cup Water
3 tsp DAP
1 – 3/4 Cup Water

wander what would happen if you mixed a little of that in with EDWORTS apple hooch?
 
Gear101 said:
Mahogany (300F)
-Mahogany, more brown than red in color. Raisins and figs with some mild bitterness developing. There is a tart sweetness, and a loss of complex caramel flavors. The caramels are replaced by bittersweet toast and burnt sugar characters. It is rich and decadent but not as complex as 290F.
2 Lbs Sugar
1 Cup Water
3 tsp DAP
1 – 3/4 Cup Water

wander what would happen if you mixed a little of that in with EDWORTS apple hooch?

I've added 3# to the edworts recipe. It was good, but was more of a backed flavor that was ultimately lost. I still have plans down the line to back sweeten with it.
 
Now for my question. I have seen asked here a few times already is about how fermentable this sugar is after cooking it. Does anyone know how fermentable this stuff really is?
My OG is 1.075
I guess my FG will answer my question in a couple weeks.

yes, that IS the question. Ive asked it once or twice.

You know, Ive heard a lot of self proclaimed scientists on this forum talking about all their fancy equipment. Yet, nobody has actually tested the fermentability of this syrup. Everything else seems rather superfluous, color, taste, etc., if it isnt as fermentable as the real stuff.

Im hoping to try something after my next batch is bottled with some of the yeast slurry.. maybe Ill have some answers. Ill be sure to share if I do.

If anyone else has any info, im sure the two of us arent the only ones that would be interested.

cheers!
 
Thanks for the recipe and tips. I had to post a pic because I'm pretty pleased with the color of my dark amber 290 syrup!

darkamber.jpg
 
As to the fermentability questions. I have been wondering myself.
Patiently waiting for this to ferment out.

The batch I worked up 8 weeks ago:
5lbs white sugar+5tsplemon juice+2tsp DAP.
I aimed really low on the DAP because I took the syrup all the way up to 320. (the low range of where sugar will caramelize on its own without anything else added to it.)
I ended up with a very flavorful caramel the color of coca-cola. No burnt flavors, but more like a sweet dark molasses/toasted marshmallow taste.
Mixed this into my carboy with 5 gallons of fresh UV treated cider.
OG 1.080
FG 1.005
Yeast was Lalvin 71b-1122.
Every other cider I have made finished well below 1.000 using combinations of white/brown sugar. So there is definitely some unfermentables in there.
It tastes delicious right out of the carboy. I always drink my hydrometer samples.

I am waiting to get my hands on some fresh cider to bottle this stuff. Going to split it 50/50 then pasteruize after carbonating. Target abv around 6-7.
The color is beautiful, will post pics this weekend.
 
jkoegel said:
As to the fermentability questions. I have been wondering myself.
Patiently waiting for this to ferment out.

The batch I worked up 8 weeks ago:
5lbs white sugar+5tsplemon juice+2tsp DAP.
I aimed really low on the DAP because I took the syrup all the way up to 320. (the low range of where sugar will caramelize on its own without anything else added to it.)
I ended up with a very flavorful caramel the color of coca-cola. No burnt flavors, but more like a sweet dark molasses/toasted marshmallow taste.
Mixed this into my carboy with 5 gallons of fresh UV treated cider.
OG 1.080
FG 1.005
Yeast was Lalvin 71b-1122.
Every other cider I have made finished well below 1.000 using combinations of white/brown sugar. So there is definitely some unfermentables in there.
It tastes delicious right out of the carboy. I always drink my hydrometer samples.

I am waiting to get my hands on some fresh cider to bottle this stuff. Going to split it 50/50 then pasteruize after carbonating. Target abv around 6-7.
The color is beautiful, will post pics this weekend.

Cool! I'd be curious to see how low your recipe would finish if you used some D2 instead of homemade candi syrup...

Sounds like it is at least less fermentable than dextrose.

That cider sounds delicious.
 
I couldn't for the life of me get this stuff to stay in liquid form. I followed the directions to a T and absolutely couldn't get it to stay liquid. As soon as it cooled it was a hard crystallized mess. I finally made one batch and kept it hot and then dumped it into my kettle near the end of the boil, that worked fine and it's very tasty. I gave up after about 4 failed attempts. I tried to find an answer in this thread but couldn't.

Any tricks?
 
thirstyutahn said:
I couldn't for the life of me get this stuff to stay in liquid form. I followed the directions to a T and absolutely couldn't get it to stay liquid. As soon as it cooled it was a hard crystallized mess. I finally made one batch and kept it hot and then dumped it into my kettle near the end of the boil, that worked fine and it's very tasty. I gave up after about 4 failed attempts. I tried to find an answer in this thread but couldn't.

Any tricks?

Are you adding water after the fact to bring the temperature back down after the fact? It's not enough to simply let it cool down by itself, it needs to be done by adding more water. After cooling it down with water, it needs to be brought back up to 240° and *no higher*.

If you HAVE followed the instructions properly and still end up with hard candy, your thermometer is wrong.

It solidifies into hard candy when brought to a certain temperature (and cooled). As the solution is boiled, the boiling temp increases BECAUSE the water evaporates, which means that the concentration of the solution is increasing. As such, the highest temperature reached before cooling is an indicator of the water content, which is why making syrups or candy is all about temperature... once the water content of the solution is reduced to a certain point, it will harden at room temperature. This is why it needs to be cooled down with water, so that water is added back into the solution, and the final concentration is tightly controlled by letting it heat back up to 240°.

So if you followed the instructions properly, either your thermometer is off by a fair bit, or you're making some sort of measurement error. Or just have the wrong temperature in mind. Either way, chemistry dictates that you're letting the temp get too high. It's not even a case of "most likely" - without adding further ingredients, this is the ONLY way it will solidify when cooled.

Although even if you only have hard candy to work with, it can still be added to the boil or fermentor (though it's harder to measure out only a specific portion).
 
It also helps keep it from turning into hard candy if you don't heat it all the way up to 240 at the last. I only heated mine up to around 225-230 and it didn't crystallize at all. My brew day even got bumped out a week so it sat on the counter for a full week before using it. (sealed up, of course.)
 
To the fermentability question, there was a video (might be on youtube) I found on some website where they actually fermented syrup made similar to what's made in this thread and compared to to fermented D2. D2 fermented down to almost 1.000 but the homemade syrup didn't get very close. So obviously there's a lot of caramelized sugar not getting fermented out. I believe Darkcandi says D2 is 97% fermentable.
 
Thanks emjay. I think I'm going to buy a candy thermometer. I have a thermapen but I also only made a half batch and even in a small pot I think it was too shallow to get a really good reading. Sounds to me like I did indeed follow the directions well I just need an actual candy thermometer.
 
Hmmm... I have a Thermapen as well and know they have a high rate of accuracy, but perhaps yours is off somehow? It should be able to take a good measurement with just a ⅛" depth.

How old is yours? Normally I would look for another explanation than question the accuracy of a Thermapen, but if you really have been following the instructions to a T, that's really the only possible explanation. How many times have you tried this recipe?

The manual that comes with it has very good instructions for determining if it's reading accurately, and how to calibrate it if it's not. Perhaps you should try that out.

Regardless, you can make this just fine even with a (quality) thermometer that's reading off. Just raise it back to a lower temperature (perhaps try 10-15 degrees lower) after cooling it down with water.

And now that I've suggested that, I have to ask... is the "candy" ending up darker than you're intending? And lastly, I noticed you said it's "crystallizing", and I'm wondering if that's just a poor choice of words, as it actually shouldn't be forming any crystals, but rather just solidify into a smooth "glass".
 
Ya its dead on accurate I've tested it very recently and its only 4 months old.

Yeah crystallize probably isn't the best choice of words. It is the perfect color and nice and liquidy but as soon as it cools off after bringing it back up to the 240 temp it turns solid. You can kinda heat it back up like you would honey. I'm wondering if I need to adjust my 2 water addition because when I dump it in it takes a long time to bring it back up to 240. I want to say the temp got down to 170 or so when i pour the 2nd water in. Could it be evaporating too much? Also remember I was doing a half batch and so I split the recipe exactly in half.
 
Ya know if you ever have had honey solidify it looked exactly like that. It did not look like a solid glass it turned cloudy.
 
I had the same problem. It was liquid when I poured it in the glass, but became solid after it cooled. A quick google search i found an Online candy forum that said two things: 1. I may have evaporated too much water off cause my temps took forever to get to. 2. If you stir as it cools down you align the molecular structure to get in the crystal shape.

The solution was pretty easy. Since my batch was in a quart jar I heated in the microwave with some water on top. As it started to melt I stirred to break up the chunks. After they were all dissolved I continued heating until it boiled for about 30 seconds. I removed from the microwave and let sit on the counter as it cooled, and did not stir again. I think I added a bit much water back, but once it was in the fridge it was nice and syrupy. Then it got used for coffee and ice cream!
 
thirstyutahn said:
Ya know if you ever have had honey solidify it looked exactly like that. It did not look like a solid glass it turned cloudy.

Honey DOES crystallize, and sugar solutions can as well, though the rapid candymaking process of heating to a certain point and cooling makes it more like a glass.

More important than the clarity, did it solidify nice and smooth like a cloudy candy apple, or did it crystallize into rough, chunks, or some sort of geometric pattern? Perhaps you can take a picture?

Are you using any ingredients other than sugar, water, and DAP? If you're using a different yeast nutrient, what are the ingredients? Are you heating it on a stovetop on low?
 
So what are the monks doing, making thier own candi syrup or going with store bought? Most of the Belgian recipes call for candi in one form or another.

Is this addressed in BLAM or elsewhere?
 
ultravista said:
So what are the monks doing, making thier own candi syrup or going with store bought? Most of the Belgian recipes call for candi in one form or another.

Is this addressed in BLAM or elsewhere?

I believe it is. And IIRC, they're supposedly just using plain old table (beet) sugar most of the time.
 
I need 3 pounds of Dark Candi for a Rochefort clone. How many pounds of sugar will I need to make 3 pounds of candi?
 
ultravista said:
I need 3 pounds of Dark Candi for a Rochefort clone. How many pounds of sugar will I need to make 3 pounds of candi?

A little less than 3. Use 3 to make it and use the leftover on ice cream
 
Just made a batch of 290 with a couple little twists. Started out wanting to make 3 lbs sugar but wanted to do a test with only part of it. I started with 1 lb sugar and 1/2 cup water. I used 1/2 tsp of ammonium phosphate and 1/2 tsp of White Labs Nutrient (not really knowing but thinking it had amino acids and might give me some more complex flavors. It started to color up about 170 and by 290 it looked pretty nice so I added water to cool. However, it seemed to be down to 220 before I added 3/4 cup so I just stopped at about 2/3 cup. I poured that into a hot mason jar (about 1 pt) and cooled some for color and flavor comparison. I seemed to be around the 280 color and my flavors were very mild.

Now it was time to do the rest and I thought I would go to 300. So I started heating up the 2 lbs sugar 1 cup water, 1 1/2 tsp ammonium phosphate and 1 tsp of yeast nutrient. Then as it started to melt I decided, why not throw in the previous batch and have it be double cooked. So I did just that. I was dangerously high in the pot so heating took a little more caution and therefore a little more time than expected. Because I already had some colored sugar in there I couldn't tell when the color development started but certainly by 250 it was getting significantly darker and by 290 the whole batch was somewhere between the dark amber and the mahogany, really nice color. This time I added about 1 3/4 cup water with a lot of sputtering activity but that got it down to 220. The syrup seems more liquid than the previous batch and the flavor is really nice. I would say that despite the color it is about the intensity of flavor of maple syrup. However the flavor is definitely more fig and a bakery than maple. I expected more roastiness but that isn't there. Got three pint mason jars quite full. This is going to go into a dark strong ale so it should come out a nice carmel color. Looking forward to it.

I think it is worth mentioning some things for those doing it for the first time. The transition around 230 takes a fair amount of time without temperature change and pretty vigorous boiling and foaming, presumably due to the water boiling off. Then it settles down a bit but still goes slowly up to about 260. It seems to pick up from there. It takes a surprising amount of heat (flame in my case) to get the temp up. The boiling is surprisingly controlled above about 250. You can really put up the heat without a lot of foaming. As has been said, the stuff is very hot and very sticky (read burns and keeps on burning). Also, slow addition of water until the temp drops to about 240 is a must. Just back up and pour slowly with stirring. Hope that helps someone.

Thanks loads to SnickASaurusRex and others who have contributed to the conversation.
 
I imagine that no it woudl not work as desired, but I woudl try it anyways, only cost $2 to give it a go. Diammonium phosphate is readily available for order anywhere in the world.
 
I recently made some syrup for a tripel. At the time I didn't have any DAP and used cream of tartar, which was fine since I was shooting for a clear syrup.
2012-07-22011117.jpg


I also made a very light amber using cream or tartar that will be used in a yet to be determined beer. This was 270.
2012-07-31104300.jpg


Then I picked up some DAP and made a nice DARK amber for use in an upcoming dubbel. this was the #5 recipe. All I can say is OMG. If you make this stuff use DAP. The flavors that were brought out are incredible. I made a little extra and saved that in a smaller jar just to used on ice cream or biscuits. Thanks for the recipe!
2012-07-31104241.jpg
 
Question: for those that have used this with cider or apfelwein. How did it turn out? What temp syrup did you use and how did it effect the final flavor? I'm looking to use maybe a mix of 280 & 290 with store bought juice and concentrate mixed with raw cider. I'm going for that caramel apple on a stick flavor. I have used the 290 for the Carmel amber ale and liked it, but it didn't leave much for residual sugars. I'm thinking of using it both in primary and to backsweeten with a can of apple juice concentrate after crashing and killing the yeasties. I will be force carbonating... The event I want to brew for is in February... So I want to start soon to get the cider at its peak, and mellowed out a little.
 
just tried this yesterday with a bottle of the LD Carlson yeast nutrient (made with di-ammonium phosphate and urea). was going for the 290F deep amber syrup and everything went well except i think i actually made the 270-280F syrup. I did a quarter batch just to test so I suspect the thin amount of liquid in pot gave thermometer false reading, went up to 292F before added water. I thought the syrup would continue to darken after cooling and bringing temperature back up but seemed to stay the same. Maybe next time will go more based on color. Smelled slightly of ammonia when cooking it, although I didn't try too hard to smell it while cooking. All in all, though i wasnt up to the right temp, I made a pretty good amber syrup- lots of caramel and vanilla with hints of cardamom and toastiness.

Plan on using this recipe in a few weeks for the amber ale recipe listed in this thread and also in some belgians. I think I will retry it this afternoon in a half batch, shooting for the deep amber syrup, then wont bring back up to 240F so I can keep it a syrup and use it to glaze a baked ham with...so excited! thanks for a great technique!

IMG_4900.jpg


IMG_4903.jpg
 
I think I am missing something on this procedure.
I am pretty sure I followed the instructions correctly but I am creating a semi-solid instead of a syrup.
Did 2lbs with 1 cup of water + 1 tsp dap, cooked to 290, added 1/2cup of water and stirred in good as soon as the meter hit 290. Temp dropped to 240 and I put it in the ice bath.
Poured it into the mason jar while still warm, it is now a semi-solid in the jar. Not really sure how I am going to get it out.
 
Seems to me that you didn't bring the temperature down far enough with the water before you chilled the rest of the way in ice. If the temperature isn't down below boiling most of the water will have boiled off as it is cooling the syrup. WHen that happens, there is not much left to keep the sugar liquid. Try going down to 220 and then chilling. I'll be that works better. Just a guess.
 
I think I am missing something on this procedure.
I am pretty sure I followed the instructions correctly but I am creating a semi-solid instead of a syrup.
Did 2lbs with 1 cup of water + 1 tsp dap, cooked to 290, added 1/2cup of water and stirred in good as soon as the meter hit 290. Temp dropped to 240 and I put it in the ice bath.
Poured it into the mason jar while still warm, it is now a semi-solid in the jar. Not really sure how I am going to get it out.

it just probably crystalized.. try heating the jar in a pot of hot (boiling) water
 
If it's crystallizing then you didn't get enough inversion. You can try adding more DAP, adding an acid, heating at a slightly slower rate, or doing the double cook. Or you can do the inversion process first and go from there. Also this question has been addressed in the thread.
 
Wait, is it crystallized or is it just too thick? Those are two very different things. Certainly the capacity to crystallize is dependent upon the degree of saturation and therefore amount of water. But crystallization should be obvious.
 
It was crystallized.
I loosened it out of the jar with some boiling water and lots of elbow grease.
I re-cooked it but this time I added 1 cup of water at the finish instead of the 1/2 cup from the recipe, it got it down to 220.
I got syrup this time.
 
How long should this stuff stay good? I made a few lbs about 6 months ago and it is still a perfect syrup consistency.
 
The ability of "supersaturated" solutions to stay crystal free often depends upon whether there are any crystals or small particles for new crystals to form on. Also on temperature. I would think that if you have a nice clean syrup and store reasonably warm it should stay for a very long time. If it does crystallize, you can just warm it up. It's also pretty difficult for microbes to grow in this high a concentration of sugar and there are probably none there if you bottled it in clean bottles when the syrup was still very hot.
 
Hey everyone. A month or so ago I made a couple pounds of sugar #5 and it turned out really, really well. I was very happy with the complexity of flavour.


Candi Syrup Starting to Boil by Hot Pepper Daddy, on Flickr


Candi Syrup Almost Done by Hot Pepper Daddy, on Flickr


Nice Colour by Hot Pepper Daddy, on Flickr


I then brewed my first Dubbel (included 800g, almost 2 lbs), which is now on tap. I'm very happy with this brew!


Abbey Dubbel by Hot Pepper Daddy, on Flickr


I'm making another 4 lbs of this today. Thanks for all thr work on this everyone!
 
So that article says that a variety of amino acids are necessary for the flavors. What about using the food type amino acids from whole foods or something
 
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