Caramelized beet sugar?

[pwnshop]

Hey guys,

So i have been away travelling in Europe for a month and spent a good deal of time in Belgium. We tried basically every beer imaginable, even took a trip to Westvleteren to drink the 12 and see the Abbey

I have a new found deep appreciation for Belgian brewing and beer culture after this trip. I felt inspired to try my hand at making some clones, and maybe eventually formulating my own recipes.

So i have been perusing the internet looking up Rochefort, St Bernardus, Achel, Chimay, Westvleteren etc clones all day.

This lead me to researching a bit into candi syrup. Specifically making my own candi syrup. It seems like something I can do fairly easily, so in addition to tackling some of these recipes I decided I would also try making my own syrup.

Now after a long introduction here is my question:
A recipe i found calls for 1.5 lbs of D-180 candi syrup and 1.5 lbs of caramelized beet sugar. I'm thinking I can make an approximation of the D-180 by following some of the instructions i found online (i know its not going to be the same, and thats ok), but I'm wondering what is this caramelized beet sugar? Its just beet sugar caramelized by boiling in water? couldnt i just add 1.5 lbs of sugar to the boiling wort? would using beet sugar (no idea where to buy this) would have a big flavour difference over regular sugar?

I have never used sugars or syrups in a brew before so I have a lot of questions before getting started, despite spending the whole day reading about it.

Thanks for any clarification and help, and sorry for being a noob still !

 

[frazier]

A lot of good info HERE, which you may have already seen. I have used this method numerous times to make candi syrup.

I may be wrong, but I don't think there is any real difference between beet sugar and cane sugar. I believe it was Arthur C. Clarke who said, "Not even God can tell the difference between one carbon atom and another." That principle seems to apply here as well.

Cheers!

 

[pwnshop]

A lot of good info HERE, which you may have already seen. I have used this method numerous times to make candi syrup.

I may be wrong, but I don't think there is any real difference between beet sugar and cane sugar. I believe it was Heinlein who said, "Not even God can tell the difference between one carbon atom and another." That principle seems to apply here as well.

Cheers!

Yep I was thinking of brewing this recipe with 1.5lbs of syrup made using the "Mahogany" recipe from that thread.

its the 1.5lbs of caramelized beet sugar in the recipe that I'm not sure how to approximate. So I'm guessing I just need to caramelize 1.5lbs of sugar? And to do this i just boil it? is there a specific temperature range?

Would it be wrong just to add 1.5lbs of sugar to the boiling wort? In general would caramelizing sugar before adding it to the wort really make a huge difference in flavour in the final product?

edit: actually now im googling how to caramelize sugar and the process seems to be pretty close to the same as making candi sugar. So i'm thinking maybe I would just make 1.5lbs of the "Rose" recipe to approximate the 1.5lbs of carmelized beet sugar? and then 1.5lbs of the mohagany to approximate the D-180?

 

[peterj]

Would it be wrong just to add 1.5lbs of sugar to the boiling wort? In general would caramelizing sugar before adding it to the wort really make a huge difference in flavour in the final product?

Adding the sugar to the boiling wort will not caramelize it. To caramelize sugar you have to get it to a higher temperature than you can achieve when boiling a relatively dilute liquid like wort. Boiling wort won't be much above 212F (or whatever temp water boils at your elevation).

If you're using the link from above I would probably go with one of the lighter recipes like "Light" or "Light Amber".

 

[frazier]

We used to have a poster named Revvy who had a lot to say about sugars. Revvy, where are you??

Thinking about the beet vs. cane thing, I think cane sugar is a New World product, not readily available in Europe in the olden days. If there had been cane plantations in Belgium, they certainly would have used cane sugar in their beers. What they had was beets.

I would go with peterj's advice. You will end up with a mix of light and dark caramelized sugar. Let us know how it turns out!