A Belgian sugar primer
In the past couple of weeks I’ve read several references that would indicate Belgian brewers the use “candi sugar,” the most recent being in The Naked Pint: An Unadulterated Guide to Craft Beer
I’d like you to buy Brew Like a Monk, but even more I’d like it if I didn’t have to keep reading “candi sugar” when we’re just talking about plain old sugar, so here’s an excerpt from Chapter 7:
To boost alcohol, fermentability, and produce what Belgians refer to as a “more digestible” beer, plain sucrose―the stuff you can buy at your local grocery store―works just as well as clear candi sugar (rocks). The dark, rummy character that comes from caramelized sugar is harder to duplicate, and certainly not by using American brown sugar. Here is a quick sugar primer:
Candi sugar: References to “candi sugar” when Belgian brewers began using such an ingredient most often described caramel syrup, not the clear to dark rocks sold in the United States as “Belgian candi sugar.” The rocks you liquefy by tossing into a kettle are made by lowering cotton strings with seed crystals into hot solutions of sugar. What we really care about is the sugar itself.
Today, when brewers at Westmalle and Orval refer to candi sugar, they specify using it in liquid form. Most other brewers, Trappist and secular, who once used “clear candi sugar” have replaced it with sucrose or dextrose. As well as adding white sugar to the kettle, Rochefort includes cassonade brune in its recipes. While that translates to “brown sugar,” Candico in Antwerp produces something much different than Americans think of in making “candysugar” (its term) and cassonade brune: “granulated crystals, obtained from cooling down strongly concentrated sucrose-solutions boiled at very high temperatures.” Most of Candico’s sales to confectionary producers, biscuit factories, and breweries are “candysugar” in syrup form.
Sucrose: The basic white sugar you buy at A&P comes from sugar beets or sugar cane; both produce the same end product. They are crushed, dissolved in water, and the raw syrup is boiled down to concentrate it to a point where some fraction crystallizes. The remaining syrup is separated from what is now 95% pure sugar. The crystals are further processed several times to increase its purity, eventually yielding the pure white crystals.
Brown sugar: To produce brown sugar in North America, the crystals are left much smaller than for white sugar, and the syrup or molasses is not washed off completely. Many producers have in fact instituted processes in which they make brown sugars by blending refined white crystal sugar with molasses.
Dextrose: The “righthand” version of glucose, a monosaccharide derived from converted starches, much as what happens when mashing malted grain. Dextrose can be made from a variety of cheap sources, including corn, wheat, rice, and potatoes. Belgian brewers used glucose by the nineteenth century.
Invert sugar: Glucose and fructose together make up sucrose. When fructose is “inverted” by hydrolysis, the resulting invert sugar is theoretically easier for yeast to ferment.
Caramelized sugar: Caramelization occurs when a sugar molecule is heated to a high-enough temperature to begin to break down and create the characteristic flavors of caramel. Sugar producers are extremely careful not to subject sugars to temperatures high enough to cause caramelization, because it would introduce these flavors and cause product loss (any sugar that is caramelized is no longer sugar, so it can’t be crystallized). Caramel syrups are sold in Europe, giving brewers a variety of choices not available in the United States. Many American brewers use dark candi (rocks) as a substitute, but while the darkest provide a rummy, unrefined character, they don’t come close to replicating the caramelized flavors found in darker Belgian ales.
January 26th, 2010 at 2:00 am
[...] December 12, 2009 Leave a comment Go to comments http://www.brewlikeamonk.com/?p=88 says To boost alcohol, fermentability, and produce what Belgians refer to as a “more [...]
January 29th, 2010 at 11:53 pm
Hi, I want to say that I love your book. It has inspired me to strive to recreate my own beers in the Trappist style. I have a question for you about the use of corn and wheat starch that you described Rochefort using. Is it possible for you to describe how exactly they use it? I am trying to replicate Rochefort 10’s “thickness” and I am under the impression that it is the wheat starch which does this. Please correct me if I am wrong. Thank you.
January 31st, 2010 at 10:15 am
Thanks for the kind words, James.
They are used in the kettle. I’m not so sure if wheat starch adds anything to the Rochefort 10 mouthfeel, and neither is Gumar Santos (the engineer who oversees the brewery).
January 31st, 2010 at 5:53 pm
Thank you Stan! I was unsure as well if the wheat starch added to the mouthfeel. I am slowly working my way through recipes, adding this or taking away that, in order to discover what makes a good Trappist style beer. Any bit of knowledge I can find always helps my journey.
February 2nd, 2010 at 4:11 pm
So I suggested to a fellow brewer that he make his own caramelized sugar for his next batch of Dubbel. He proceeded to tell me I’m wrong and that they just use sucrose (which I know from reading your book, they in fact do). So I read him a quote from your book on page 241 about the different types of ingredients the Belgian use compared to the Americans. So who is right in this instance?
February 3rd, 2010 at 2:36 pm
John,
There is no point in using the clear rocks sold in some homebrew stores as candi sugar. Just plain sucrose will do the job. In that case you want include sugar to boost gravity yet end up with a “digestible” beer (well attenuated, like in the high 80s apparent).
Unrefined sugar will add rummy, dark fruit notes in dark strong beers (such dubbels or Rochefort and Westvleteren beers). You can make your own caramelized sugar or use the products from Dark Candi Inc. (which come from Belgium).
So I guess I’m voting with your friend. And at the same time pointing out that Caracole’s Nostradamus is made with sucrose and then four different dark malts.
February 18th, 2010 at 9:26 pm
Stan,
Your Brew Like a Monk is virtually my brewers bible when it comes to brewing Belgian and Belgian inspired beers. No other even comes close. I also just ordered Brewing with Wheat and can’t wait to read it over and over again.
So I’ve tried my best to find this information on the boards before I bothered you, but there still seems to be some gaps in my knowledge of exactly what the monks use for their sugar additions in their dark beers (dubbels and most importantly dark strong ales).
I’m trying to make my own that resembles the D2 Syrup as closely as possible (that stuff is awesome, but a little too pricey).
1. Is cane an accurate substitute for beet sugar? Do the monks actually use beet sugar?
2. Is the syrup the entire volume of water and sugar, or the substance left over after crystallization?
3. Is an acid used by the monks for the inversion process, or is it straight heat?
I imagine I’m making this more difficult than it needs to be, but in brewing with the spirit of the monks, I’d like to refine my process to be the most efficient and cost effective as possible. (Sorry for the long post!).
Regards,
Brody Nasse
February 20th, 2010 at 1:01 pm
Brody – First, thanks for the kind words.
For a dark syrup the monastery breweries now use something similar to D2 rather than making their own. Since they don’t all order from the same place I can’t say for sure whether the source is cane or beet. That doesn’t really matter in white sugar, since you get refined sucrose. It might make a small difference in the syrup, because part of the point is the “impurities” and these will vary. But I wouldn’t sweat it.
I think you’ll find that D2 and the recipe Randy Mosher provided for making your own work equally well and both are true to the monastic spirit.
The key when using your own syrup or D2 is to consider what percentage of fermentables it contributes and the color. You get your final color with the addition of dark malts (but think about the flavors they add) and make sure sugar contributes ~15% (very roughly – some go higher and make great beers) by adding plain sucrose (refine sugar).
Does that simplify or confuse things?
March 19th, 2010 at 3:36 pm
Stan — First, I am about halfway through the book, and loving it, thanx! I came here trying to find a concise definition of “digestible beer”…I know it has something to do with attenuation, FG, and flavor, but just don’t feel like I could explain it to someone of they asked. While looking for that, I found this conversation on sugar, which I am really trying to also understand better. So the candi sugar I have been using is just sucrose disguised, I get that… and this nugget I found online was an eye opener as well “When heated in an acidic solution (such as wort) the sugar is inverted to make D-(+)-glucose and D-(-)-fructose. Yeasts will invert the sucrose if it is not already in that form before using by using invertase.” I was using it because I thought the whole point was I needed invert sugar…but this says if I boil sucrose in the wort, I am making it invert anyway…is that right? Then the only sugar question I would have would be, what about when I want the dark, caramelized flavor…can I just melt down and caramelize some sucrose in a pan and add that to the wort?
Sorry for the long post, but it all ties together in my head. Thanx!!
David
April 1st, 2010 at 10:32 am
Hi Dave – Sorry not to respond earlier. Somehow your comment ended up in the spam folder . . .
Yes, you should get the same flavor – although you aren’t looking for much in the way of sugar flavor in pale beers – whether you go to the effort of making invert sugar before the boil or add sucrose to the boil.
On pages 168 and 169 of the book you will find a recipe for making your own caramel syrup.