Belgian candy sugar for dubbel

[trentar]

Hello fellow homebrewers,

I am farily new at homebrew and in my third batch I have a Belgian dubbel, now at the end of primary fermentation and I will be bottling next week. I have used this extract Traditional Series Dubbel and 500 g of dextrose for fermentation sugar. I have also read that belgian candy sugar is used in this kind of beers, so I have bought 500 g of it. Now my question is, can I use it for a priming sugar and how much am I supposed to use it? I know there are calculators online but can I use 100% of belgian candy sugar just for priming, or is it like an addition to the regular table sugar. I thought of mixing the right amount of it into the secondary vessel with my dubbel and then bottle immediately, is this the right procedure? For example for my 10 liters of beer I would be mixing into 84.1 g of belgian candy sugar according to that calculator: Beer Priming Calculator - Brewer's Friend, would that be OK?

 

[GansBrew]

Welcome to the world of homebrew!

The Belgian candi sugars/syrups are typically used to increase the OG of the wort and provide more fermentable sugars for the yeast (as far as I know anyway), but yes, you could use the candi sugar for priming. Just make sure to calculate the correct amount of sugar needed based on beer volume and desired level of carbonation (volumes of C02), which it sounds like you've done already. I can't say much as to how it would impact the flavor, I've only ever you used corn sugar (dextrose) for priming, as I'm assuming most people do because it's one of the cheapest. I just bottled a Belgian Dark Strong (Northy 12 Belgian Quad kit from NorthernBrewer) and used corn sugar.
As far as the procedure, do you have a separate bottling bucket (usually with a spigot)? If so, I would add the sugar to that (and if it's a sugar, not a syrup, I would dissolve the sugar in a small amount of water and boil it for ~5 minutes, then cool to room temp), then rack the beer on top of the sugar, trying to minimize splashing as much as possible. This basically mixes the sugar in for you and you don't have to worry about sanitizing a spoon and stirring, which minimizes chances for contamination and oxidation. If you don't have a separate bucket, then yea you could just mix the sugar in the secondary and then immediately bottle.

Hope this helps!

 

[trentar]

Welcome to the world of homebrew!

The Belgian candi sugars/syrups are typically used to increase the OG of the wort and provide more fermentable sugars for the yeast (as far as I know anyway), but yes, you could use the candi sugar for priming. Just make sure to calculate the correct amount of sugar needed based on beer volume and desired level of carbonation (volumes of C02), which it sounds like you've done already. I can't say much as to how it would impact the flavor, I've only ever you used corn sugar (dextrose) for priming, as I'm assuming most people do because it's one of the cheapest. I just bottled a Belgian Dark Strong (Northy 12 Belgian Quad kit from NorthernBrewer) and used corn sugar.
As far as the procedure, do you have a separate bottling bucket (usually with a spigot)? If so, I would add the sugar to that (and if it's a sugar, not a syrup, I would dissolve the sugar in a small amount of water and boil it for ~5 minutes, then cool to room temp), then rack the beer on top of the sugar, trying to minimize splashing as much as possible. This basically mixes the sugar in for you and you don't have to worry about sanitizing a spoon and stirring, which minimizes chances for contamination and oxidation. If you don't have a separate bucket, then yea you could just mix the sugar in the secondary and then immediately bottle.

Hope this helps!

Thank you for your reply. Yes, I would order another fermenter with a spigot in which I would mix the light candi sugar in form of crystales (I am planning to use this secondary vessel also to dry hop etc. in the future). Would this rise the alcohol body volume more than dextrose or table sugar and do you think it would affect the body or flavour in any kind, or should I use dextrose or table sugar for priming and should spare candi sugar for primary fermentation next time? I didn't want to use it for primary because I didn't know how much to use it with the extract, on which it just said for the amount of dextrose (500 g).

 

[GansBrew]

Thank you for your reply. Yes, I would order another fermenter with a spigot in which I would mix the light candi sugar in form of crystales (I am planning to use this secondary vessel also to dry hop etc. in the future). Would this rise the alcohol body volume more than dextrose or table sugar and do you think it would affect the body or flavour in any kind, or should I use dextrose or table sugar for priming and should spare candi sugar for primary fermentation next time? I didn't want to use it for primary because I didn't know how much to use it with the extract, on which it just said for the amount of dextrose (500 g).

The candi sugar has fewer ppg (is less fermentable) than dextrose or table sugar, so you would need to add more to get the same level of carbonation as table sugar or dextrose. As long as you're using the priming sugar calculator, then this isn't an issue, as it will tell you how much of your sugar to add to get the desired level of carbonation (notice on the calculator, for a given volume of beer and desired carbonation level, the amount of dextrose or table sugar to add is less than the amount of candi sugar). As far as affecting the body/flavor, I would guess it won't have a huge impact because you're adding so little relative to the total volume of beer. I found an interesting article on this that may help: Clear Sugar Experiment - Bottling | The Mad Fermentationist - Homebrewing Blog and Pale Belgian Sugar Experiment Tasting | The Mad Fermentationist - Homebrewing Blog.

If it was me, I would probably just use dextrose or table sugar to prime, but only because they are cheaper than candi sugar and would rather use the candi sugar for another batch of beer and add it to the wort (or split the current batch in half and prime half with dextrose and half with the candi sugar and see if it makes a difference, like the brewer did in the links I provided).

Important thing is that using the candi sugar for priming will still result in a good beer, and that's all that matters!

 

[trentar]

The candi sugar has fewer ppg (is less fermentable) than dextrose or table sugar, so you would need to add more to get the same level of carbonation as table sugar or dextrose. As long as you're using the priming sugar calculator, then this isn't an issue, as it will tell you how much of your sugar to add to get the desired level of carbonation (notice on the calculator, for a given volume of beer and desired carbonation level, the amount of dextrose or table sugar to add is less than the amount of candi sugar). As far as affecting the body/flavor, I would guess it won't have a huge impact because you're adding so little relative to the total volume of beer. I found an interesting article on this that may help: Clear Sugar Experiment - Bottling | The Mad Fermentationist - Homebrewing Blog and Pale Belgian Sugar Experiment Tasting | The Mad Fermentationist - Homebrewing Blog.

If it was me, I would probably just use dextrose or table sugar to prime, but only because they are cheaper than candi sugar and would rather use the candi sugar for another batch of beer and add it to the wort (or split the current batch in half and prime half with dextrose and half with the candi sugar and see if it makes a difference, like the brewer did in the links I provided).

Important thing is that using the candi sugar for priming will still result in a good beer, and that's all that matters!

Hello again,

how would I calculate the appropriate amount of candi sugar for primary fermentation for this extract for Belgian Pale ale Traditional Series Belgian Pale Ale at which 500 g of dextrose is required for primary fermentation?

Best regards

 

[GansBrew]

Your best option would be to use recipe software like Brewer's Friend Recipe Calculator to do the conversion. The ppg of dextrose is ~42ppg, some sources say candi sugar is around 36-37 ppg (similar to what I said in my previous reply), while other say it is around 45 ppg (Brewing with Sugar). You can probably just substitute gram-for-gram, your OG (and thus final ABV) may end up being a little off from what the recipe states, but probably not by enough to make a big difference.