Why Belgian Candy sugar and not corn for real Abby Ales

If you can raise your alcohol level with regular corn or table sugar, why is rock and liquid candy sugar used in Belgium? I just did a kit from Listermann's that everyone that has tried it raves about and he gives corn sugar, and I can see why because the kit is reasonably priced. I ask because I am going to do Evan!'s Rochefort 10 clone a little down the road and it calls for clear and dark candy sugar and I was just curious.

From what I understand the clear candy is rather bland and not much different from granular sugar. On the other hand the darker the sugar the deeper the flavor it adds to the beer. Many around here actually use Belgian Candi Syrup rather than the hard candy form. The syrup is suppose to be what the actual Belgian Trappist breweries use. There is a good thread around here for trying to emulate the syrups as they are expensive at about $8 for 1.5 pounds and the Westvleteren clone I will be trying would require $3 pounds total making it rather expensive.

Search for $20 pounds of sugar and yeast nutrient and a thread should pop up that describes how to make different colored syrups for these types of beers using water, table sugar and diammonium phosphate (yeast nutrient). Hope that helps.

mnm129 said:

From what I understand the clear candy is rather bland and not much different from granular sugar. On the other hand the darker the sugar the deeper the flavor it adds to the beer. Many around here actually use Belgian Candi Syrup rather than the hard candy form. The syrup is suppose to be what the actual Belgian Trappist breweries use. There is a good thread around here for trying to emulate the syrups as they are expensive at about $8 for 1.5 pounds and the Westvleteren clone I will be trying would require $3 pounds total making it rather expensive.

Search for $20 pounds of sugar and yeast nutrient and a thread should pop up that describes how to make different colored syrups for these types of beers using water, table sugar and diammonium phosphate (yeast nutrient). Hope that helps.

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Actually I have read how to make them, but was just wondering why it was done. You have answered the question about the dark, but I wonder about the clear.

This is where I read about making them: http://www.franklinbrew.org/brewinfo/candi_sugar.html

Yes, that is a great link, and the Trappist are kind of stuck on a very old tradition, and corn is something from this new fangled world of the Americas. But sometimes great traditions should not be changed.

Pretty much I have always made my own candi sugar once I learned how, all it takes is sugar, heat, a little water and acid to invert it. I just use the juice from a lemon till I hit the soft crack, and then just add it into the last 15 minutes before I add the nutrient, Irish Moss and my immersion chiller.
Be careful, the very hot inverted sugar can splatter a little hitting the cooler boiling wort.
Here the temp range notes I use.

Inverting sugar with a little acid and water.
* Soft Ball * 115C 239F
* Hard Ball * 127C 260.6F (light)
* Soft Crack * 135C 275F (Med Light)
* Hard Crack * 150C 302F (Very Dark)

Why do I do it, I'm cheap.

They grow sugar beets in those parts of the world - cane sugar is actually quite rare and expensive (at least it used to be when I lived in the area).

See Pfeifer & Langen Sugar Varieties and more specifically Pfeifer & Langen Candy Sugar for examples of what is typical in the area.

Reading through Brew Like a Monk (BLAM around here) I find that few breweries use the clear candy. Most of the advice in the book was to use plain sugar in place of candy rocks. The dark syrup was an exception and Stan offers some alternatives to buying the syrup even. At the homebrew scale it probably doesn't make a huge cost difference either way though so if the recipe is adamant about it use your own judgement.

craigd said:

At the homebrew scale it probably doesn't make a huge cost difference either way though so if the recipe is adamant about it use your own judgement.

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Sure it does.


4 lbs of Candy Sugar is $20 at BMW, and probably closer to $30 at some LHBS.


4 lbs of home made Dark Candy sugar is $2, and roughly 20 minutes on the stove. If we're talking 2+lbs in a Belgian Dark Strong, we're talking $10 difference, which is about what the rest of the grain bill costs.

mnm129 said:

From what I understand the clear candy is rather bland and not much different from granular sugar. On the other hand the darker the sugar the deeper the flavor it adds to the beer. Many around here actually use Belgian Candi Syrup rather than the hard candy form. The syrup is suppose to be what the actual Belgian Trappist breweries use. There is a good thread around here for trying to emulate the syrups as they are expensive at about $8 for 1.5 pounds and the Westvleteren clone I will be trying would require $3 pounds total making it rather expensive.

Search for $20 pounds of sugar and yeast nutrient and a thread should pop up that describes how to make different colored syrups for these types of beers using water, table sugar and diammonium phosphate (yeast nutrient). Hope that helps.

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https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/20-lb-sugar-jar-yeast-nutrient-114837/

Simply put: If you can't taste the difference between sugar beet hard candy and powdered corn sugar, then it doesn't matter. If you can taste the difference, it does matter.

Synovia said:

Sure it does.

4 lbs of Candy Sugar is $20 at BMW, and probably closer to $30 at some LHBS.

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Well, we all have our thresholds for significant cost I guess. For 5 gallons of a beer like a Belgian Dark strong that you may put down for 6-18 months $10-20 isn't a huge difference IMO. And I'm a cheap bastard... Now for a session beer I would agree. I'd hate to get 18 months down the road and think, "Man, I wonder if this would have been better with the syrup they called for in the recipe?"

That's what I meant by use your judgment.

BillTheSlink said:

You have answered the question about the dark, but I wonder about the clear.

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I'm studing to prepare a belgian triple and I had the same wondering. After some web crawling, I came up with this:

beet sugar (normally used here in Italy and I presume in Belgium too) is made of sucrose, which is a complex sugar. The yeast can't eat it as well, so it has to produce an enzyme (invertase) to brake it into two simpler sugars: fructose and glucose. Invertase has a sour taste, so if you break the sucrose yourself, the yeast will not produce it.

Heat + acid will be able to invert the sugar. The best temp is the 50-60°C (122-140°F) range, so yesterday I tried the process descripted in the URL you posted and I added this step to it (5 mins, don't really know how much time is needed).

Then I took it to 120°C (250°F) for a pair of mins and then turned the heat off. After the sugar got cold, it became more dense than honey, but still liquid, transparent and I can see some pale reflexes.

A different process and different components are used to make the darker one: in this case you use corn sugar and a source of nitrogen (ammonium carbonate or diammonia phosphate) to introduce the Maillard reaction, which is used to get the color. Corn sugar is composed of simple sugars, so it has not to be inverted. So, why it's used inverted sugar instead of using directly corn sugar? Because it's cheaper.

Here the references I used:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candi_sugar
http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~nsw/ench485/lab14.htm
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/20-lb-sugar-jar-yeast-nutrient-114837/
http://www.franklinbrew.org/brewinfo/candi_sugar.html
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-corn-sugar.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillard_reaction

Hope it helps,
cheers from Italy
piteko