Hmm Toasted Sugar - Dry Caramelization

CornyKegs 728
Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Schlenkerla

Schlenkerla

Supporting Member
HBT Supporter
Joined
Apr 18, 2006
Messages
16,779
Reaction score
5,896
I made a blonde tonight with pilsner and toasted sugar. Got good efficiency. 1.062 Targeting 1.069.

The sugar has a good caramel taste. Its the first time I did this. I toasted it 8 hours at 300F. Wanted to test the effects of this caramelized sugar in a fairly neutral beer. Belgian Blonde with caramelized sugar.

Toasted Sugar Instructions

Sister of Carmelite - Blonde Ale - For the Aged and Still Firm.

May19-St.Joaquina%20Ve_714569.jpg


FWIW - My mother died last year in a Catholic Nursing Home. It was ran by some pretty nice nuns... The Sisters of Carmelite... hence the name of this beer.

Now to wait 3 weeks...
 
Out of 52 viewers, nobody thought dry caramelization is a cool idea for adding flavor to a lighter SRM beer?

Anyhow was thinking this might be good for ciders and drying a lighter beer with added flavor.
 
chunkwagon said:
Actually pretty cool. I'm thinking ipa :tank:
Click to expand...



White IPA?


wilserbrewer said:
I'm gonna try this, thanks!

I'm heating the house anyway during the winter....may as well run the oven and produce something :)
Click to expand...


Whatever you guys do, don't taste it hot. The carmel flavor supposedly starts to come out after an hour.

I did mine in two four hour stints. Mine had a good caramel taste.

BTW the house will smell good.

Just to be clear, this is the first time doing this. I wanted to dry out the blonde with caramel sugar vs candy sugar.
 
One thing I can't find is amount of caramelization and "baking" time. For instance, after 8 hrs of cooking, where would you place your caramelization level compared to candi sugar?
 
This is what you're talking about.... Note the Mahogany 300F....

This is what I taste at the time I did. 8 hours. I don't know that needed to go that long.

#SnickASaurusRex

Mahogany (300F)
-Mahogany, more brown than red in color. Raisins and figs with some mild bitterness developing. There is a tart sweetness, and a loss of complex caramel flavors. The caramels are replaced by bittersweet toast and burnt sugar characters. It is rich and decadent but not as complex as 290F.
Click to expand...

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=114837
 
chunkwagon said:
Yes, that's exactly what I was talking about! Thanks. Just wonder what the toasting times are for those flavor profiles. Hmm. :mug:
Click to expand...

I thought the same thing. I plan to do the caramel syrup at some time. I don't have the mason jars to store them in at the moment.

Plastic tupperware works for cooled sugar and it keeps it dry.

I didn't have to pulverize my batch in a chopper. It stayed pretty granular the whole time.

I made this one day while sitting at home watching football. I can handle stirring every thirty minutes.
 
chunkwagon said:
Yes, that's exactly what I was talking about! Thanks. Just wonder what the toasting times are for those flavor profiles. Hmm. :mug:
Click to expand...

Try these times, taste and retry.

The color change is obvious after the first hour. The subsequent were not as obvious in my opinion.

I was ok with the 300 temp at 4 and 8 hours. I wanted to really bump the needle on the caramel taste. If overdid it I'd know next time to dial it back. That might be backwards approach, go light to heavy is cautious. I'm not cautious.

If I didn't like that sugar taste I wouldn't use it in my beer and two lbs is nothing cost wise.

I'm thinking it will be diluted taste-wise. 2lb in 5 gallons with 10 lbs of pilsner. I've never used carmel syrup either.

View attachment 1486261793716.jpg
 
Sounds awesome. I wonder if this would work well in a brown or scottish ale instead of pulling off a gallon of first runnings and boiling that down into a syrup to help bring out some caramel notes.
 
TandemTails said:
Sounds awesome. I wonder if this would work well in a brown or scottish ale instead of pulling off a gallon of first runnings and boiling that down into a syrup to help bring out some caramel notes.
Click to expand...

Maybe. #chuckwagon and I were discussing toasting duration verses flavor profile. I've only done this at two stopping points. 4 and 8 hours. 8 being the first to throw into a beer.

A few things to consider as to what you want to do with this. In "Brewing like a Monk" they use caramel syrup for flavor and to dry-out bigger beers. My thoughts for this was doing these two things and not darkening the beer much. The Blonde recipe (which i made) in the book called for pilsner malt and Belgian candy sugar 10-20%. I didn't have candy sugar and I wanted to test this out. I'm speculating the sugar at 17% will really dry it out with some caramel, and toast with a little burnt sugar taste blended with low maltiness and aroma of pilsner malt. I think the caramel will stand out more than the malt itself. I normally use 2-row as my base malt, but in this case I didn't want the malt and toasted sugar competing.

I guess to answer you question is this. Do you get lots of flavor from the maillard reaction of boiling first runnings? My guess is yes. Do you need your beer dried out? Probably not. My thoughts are the toasted caramel flavor will not stand out noticeably as a bunch of crystal and roasted malts will do. Will it add complexity to your beer? Definitely Yes!

This is the first time I tried this and I'm not sure of the results. I like the toasted sugar taste, so I used it my beer. If didn't I probably would have used my Demarara Sugar. So, if you do it consider it an experiment.

Here some info on Brewing Sugars.

FWIW - Three weeks ago I made a ESB where I used demarara to dry out the beer because the only dry yeast I had on hand was Windsor and know it stops closer to 1.020. I wanted it drier. I'll take little bit of buttery caramel taste to go along with my ESB.
:rockin:
 
One point to note.... USE REFINED SUGAR!

.... people have used organic and it didn't caramelize properly. I saw this in the comments in toasting instruction link. See post #1
 
Thanks again, this seems a lot easier than boiling syrup and monitoring temperature.

Wonder what happens if you get lax on stirring every 30 minutes.....I'll likely report back with that answer lol.
 
wilserbrewer said:
5 1/2 hours at 350 without stirring, less than an inch of agar to start overflowed the dish....
View attachment 387834
Too well done?
Note to self, don't roast sugar while out at Super Bowl party.

What a $&@/!! Game!
Click to expand...

What happened? You started this and forgot it was going and went out? If so,

Try, try again...

Good thing, is there's no more football. If you call in sick tomorrow, (hung over - or - sick of working) do it during coffee time. 2-4 lbs max temp 300F and 4 hours, after a 1 hour heat soak, stir every 30 minutes, up to 4 hours. I used a pulled pork bear claw to break-up/stir the sugar. Works good. I think an ordinary fork would work too.

Let it cool 2 hours then taste it, see if you like the caramel flavor.

As for now, drink up! :mug:
 
I just toasted up about a cup of sugar to try this out, 300F for two hours. Nice caramel notes, kind of subtle. Used a bit to make a latte, added a great caramel/dulce de leche back note to the frothed milk.
 
No problem, the burnt sugar cow pie was easily removed with a metal flat spatula in about three minutes.

Will try again when I get some more sugar.

I think next time I'll keep an eye on it.

Still a wonderful aroma 24 hrs later
 
wilserbrewer said:
No problem, the burnt sugar cow pie was easily removed with a metal flat spatula in about three minutes.

Will try again when I get some more sugar.

I think next time I'll keep an eye on it.

Still a wonderful aroma 24 hrs later
Click to expand...

Is that last line sarcasm? I've never burnt that much sugar.
 
@Schlenkerla I've actually brewed your amber a couple of times. I've got some homegrown Cascades I need to use up and I'm considering another round of your amber...possibly kicked up a notch with some "toasted sugar".
From what I've gathered so far, the key is toasting right around 300 or so, watching and stirring enough to keep it from going to a liquid state. I'm thinking a pound or so?
 
chunkwagon said:
@Schlenkerla I've actually brewed your amber a couple of times. I've got some homegrown Cascades I need to use up and I'm considering another round of your amber...possibly kicked up a notch with some "toasted sugar".
From what I've gathered so far, the key is toasting right around 300 or so, watching and stirring enough to keep it from going to a liquid state. I'm thinking a pound or so?
Click to expand...

That sounds like a good idea. You have it right. I used 300F. Then heated/toasted it for 60 minutes then from there stirred every 30 minutes. It has to be uncovered. Until you take out to cool.
 
The_Bishop said:
I just toasted up about a cup of sugar to try this out, 300F for two hours. Nice caramel notes, kind of subtle. Used a bit to make a latte, added a great caramel/dulce de leche back note to the frothed milk.
Click to expand...

That's a good to know. At four it was more than subtle. At 8 it was taking on more of burnt toasted toffee bitterness.
 
jurgenph said:
now i want one of these ;)

tripel_glass.png


going to have to try the toasted sugar as well in one of my blondes.

any tasting notes on how it turned out?


J.
Click to expand...

I want one of those too. I almost got a bottle of that for my brew day. I went for the blonde because thats what I was making.

No tasting notes other than the sugar toasted times. The beer is still fermenting. It's only day 5.

I'll definitely report back.
 
Weezy said:
Interesting! How does it taste compared to molasses or blackstrap?
Click to expand...

It's not molasses tasting at all. It's caramel tasting.

I think it's like caramel syrup; starts out a light caramel then progresses to just caramel, to toffee, to toasty slightly burnt bitter caramel.

I've only done this once. In a beer and it's still fermenting. I've tasted the sugar at 4 and 8 hours. The sugar is light brown and taste was caramel at 4 to a toasty caramel at 8 and slightly darker. I've taken it to what I think it's caramelization limit at 8 hours.
 
Got this beer in a keg on Monday. It's not real clear at the moment, kinda yeasty from racking. Hit with gelatin. It's got some residual sweetness at the moment it needs to clean up before I can ascertain how much dry caramel is in this beer.

The hop Sterling seems to remind me of northern brewer. I had to go look at the recipe just to jog my memory. Damn way off.

Sterling https://g.co/kgs/a2MuBV
 

Similar threads

redwing_al
Michigan Winter Beer Festival
Replies
2
Views
2K
GrumpySquirrel
G

Latest posts

Back
Top