Caramelizing brown sugar/bottle condition query

[RachmaelBenApplebaum]

So I plan on bottling a cider this weekend. Been in primary for 3 weeks, pretty dry, gonna be dynamite bottle-carbed, but seems like it's missing something. I was curious if I used brown sugar to prime I wanted to caramelize it first and make some of the sugars unfermentable to give it a little more body/flavor. How much of the volume of sugar is turned unfermentable by this process? Would I step the priming sugar up to 1 cup instead of 3/4ths and hope that the carmelizing process made enough unfermentable sugar to still get good carb, added flavor, and no exploding bottles? It all seems a little shady to me but it's something I'd really like to try. Any thoughts/concerns/experiences?

 

[agent44]

You might have to go ahead with your plan and just crack a few open to check carb and then bottle pasteurize.

 

[RachmaelBenApplebaum]

I was also thinking (after downing a few Magners bombers tonight) that I could just go ahead with the 3/4 cup brown sugar, reduce/caramelize it, water it back down and proceed with priming and at the very worst only have a lightly carbed cider. It's not like it has much of anything to give it a head, might as well mess around. The only reason I say this is because I'm not thrilled about the idea of pasteurizing anything. I know it's pretty common practice but I just don't have the time/energy/will to do it, not to mention the screw-up factor associated with it. Maybe I'll caramelize the proper amount and add a pinch or two of un-caramelized brown sugar to give it a little blessing and run with it, at the worst I keep my conditioning bottles in cardboard cases wrapped in plastic bags and put in thick-plastic tubs in case of explosions. It's also below freezing at night were I live currently and I can set them outside to cold stabilize until I'm ready to break em out?

 

[Sir Humpsalot]

"Brown" sugar is just white sugar with some molasses added. So unless you are eager to taste the molasses, there's no reason to use it over plain white table sugar.

The amount of fermentables remaining after carmelization of white or "brown" sugar depends on how dark you carmelize it. You are right though, there isn't much in it to give a lasting head anyway, so you'd probably be best to just use the normal amount and let it be a little undercarbed. That'd be the safe way to go.

But why not add the carmelized sugar to secondary instead? Then you can taste it and see if you are happy with the results before bottling.

 

[RachmaelBenApplebaum]

my juice had an O.G. of 1.050 and I added 2lbs of honey and 1lb of raisins with wlp775. I don't want to add the sugar in secondary because it'll just get eaten straight through by the wlp775 and push the gravity even higher. I have a keg system to force carbonate but that needs to stay open for a regular series of beers I go through. PLus I want the cider to age/bottle condition and the stuff that goes through my kegs rarely lasts long. I also had another thought but I'm not sure it'll have the desired effect. Do a quick steep of some specialty grain like caramel malt and add it as a sort of tea, but I think that would be straying too far off the path . I'll probably end up doing the regular amount caramelized, rehydrated to be thinner so it disperses in the bottling bucket with a couple extra pinches of the stuff for good luck. Tiny amounts can't effect the carbonation too drastically.