candy sugar

[peardu]

i just ordered a belgian saision ale partial mash kit i also got some bitter orange peel to go with the brew i was planning on adding a pound of clear candy suger to the batch. my question is what flavor diffrence will candy suger nake compared to adding corn suger ive never worked with it before i know it is derived from beats. Thanks in advance Dustin

 

[Schnitzengiggle]

Clear candi sugar (fructose/glucose), Sucrose (table sugar), and dextrose (corn sugar), rock candi sugar I believe is also simply sucrose in a "rock form".

I would use table sugar, it is cheaper, and you will have less of a chance of it scorching on the bottom of your kettle because it will dissolve faster.

AS far as flavor goes, they will all be very similar and should add relatively little to none. Candi syrup (inverted sugar--fructose/glucose) is said to prevent yeast from producing invertase, which basically means the yeast doesn't have to produce an extra enzyme to metabolize the sugar.

FWIW, table sugar is just fine and it is what I would recommend if you are simply trying to boost alcohol, and dry out the beer.

Darker Belgian Candi Syrups is a whole different story.

Cheers!

 

[erikpete18]

Yeah, clear candi sugar, table sugar, and corn sugar are all going to give zero flavor to your beer. Since table sugar is far cheaper than the others I'd also go that way. Clear candi sugar is just sucrose (table sugar) that has been inverted into its components (fructose and glucose). I've heard arguments that breaking sucrose down for the yeast helps them a little, but the yeast are perfectly capable of breaking down sucrose on their own assuming your yeast are healthy. If you're really worried about it, you could always add it a few days into fermentation once you've got a nice big yeast population that's already gone to town on a lot of the fermentables from the wort, but its not necessary. Just keep the level of sugars in a decent range (~10% of the grist) so that you don't get fusel alcohols, especially at the higher temps you might be fermenting at.

On a side note, if you're interested you can invert your own table sugar and save a bunch of cash, or even experiment on making your own darker candi syrups using this excellent write up on here. I've only tried the darkest stuff (sugar #5), but the "light" version in that first post sounds like it'd be quite tasty in a saison!

 

[peardu]

Thanks