Process behind Dark Candi Inc.

Hi all,

I've a curiousity on what lies "under the hood", so to speak, of dark Belgian candi sugar.

So, while researching on the web, I found the blog associated with the book "Brew Like a Monk", and read an attack on "candi sugar", saying such wasn't authentic at all. Poking around a bit more, I found a recommendation of this product, which is supposedly imported from Belgium:

http://www.darkcandi.com/d2.html

This product's specs say it is made by the repeated heating and cooling of beet sugar. This makes me curious:

1) What *is* authentic with respect to "Belgian" beer styles as far as added sugars go?

2) How can the production processes be imitated in the kitchen, if the processes for making standard "Belgian candi sugar" of the type polemicised against on Brew Like a Monk in fact don't make the real thing?

NOTE: I have brewed with homemade caramel before. Is that the "real" thing?

Thanks,
Matt

The candi sugar, the hard and granular kind, is the stuff BLAM was ripping. It's pretty useless as it is equivalent to table sugar as it really doesn't add much flavor at all (even the darker ones).

The Candi Syrup however, like D2 and the such, is very similar to what a lot of the Belgian Breweries use. Unlike the hard granular stuff, it adds a tremendous amount of flavor you can't really get from any substitute.

MattTimBell said:

2) How can the production processes be imitated in the kitchen, if the processes for making standard "Belgian candi sugar" of the type polemicised against on Brew Like a Monk in fact don't make the real thing?

Click to expand...

I have been meaning to try this a while myself. I've seen some people say you can get the exact same thing making the syrup it yourself. I've also seen people swear that nobody has reproduced the complexity that D2 provides. I'll let you know my experience when I try it.

here is a good thread of someone trying to reproduce D2:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/candi-syrup-experiment-trying-clone-d2-220882/

Brew like a monk and Radical Brewing seemed to both say don't bother paying the high costs of the dried stuff, since its nothing more than sucrose.

DannPM, we're neighbors!

That's a really interesting experiment, there. Thanks for reposting the link!