BeerBorg

This was a little experiment I did. Sorry for the crappy and totally inappropriate glasses, but it's all I had to split them with simultaneously as a little flight of 3 beers.

These beers are are *all made from the same wort*. As in literally the same batch of wort. They are all using the same Belgian yeast. The only difference between them is I split it between 3 fermenters, and in one it was simply the base wort, in two it was that wort with 12oz of 5L candi syrup, and in three it's that wort with 12oz of 45L candi syrup. I divided the yeast equally and pitched the same amount in each fermenter. So #1 did have a slightly higher effective pitch rate.

#1 base wort is more phenolic tasting (spicy like pepper and cloves) and has a bit of bubble gum and obviously has less alcohol. Its like 4.5%. It's basically Belgian lawnmower beer and tastes more like a table saison. It is more quaffable, where the others are more sipping beers.

#2 tastes like pretty much just like Leffe Blonde. The candi syrup also is giving it much better head retention (invert sugar does do this, it's not simply a matter of carb levels, they are pretty much the same). It's more like 6.5%. If I didn't know it was the same base wort as #1, I wouldn't have ever guessed it. At all. The Abbaye yeast clearly behaves totally different around higher gravities and/or invert sugars and/or slightly lower pitch rates then it does without said things. I'll have to try this again some day with just cane sugar in #1 to make gravity the same and see for sure.

#3 tastes best as I can describe halfway between Leffe Blonde and Leffe Brown. It's also more like 6.5%. It doesn't have the coffee / toasty flavors of Leffe Brown. But it has the toffee and vanilla and is slightly sweeter then #2. And again I wouldn't have ever guessed it was the same base wort as #1.

Except for the alcohol, I prefer #2 and #3, with #2 being the winner I think.

So ends my little experiment, although I'm going to do it again but with 90L and 180L and 240L candi syrup. Because I can.

I guess I never realized that sugar helps that much in head retention.

berryman wrote:I guess I never realized that sugar helps that much in head retention.

It has to be at least slightly caramelized (heat processed) inverted sugar. Normal cane sugar or dextrose doesn't help. Sugar simply inverted with just acid won't help. I don't think clear candi syrup or cheap sugar rocks will do it as well either.

The sugar I used here is inverted with *just heat* there are no acid shortcuts. It takes 2-3x as long to make it that way, but the results are better, it's more complex. I think I posted somewhere how to do it in the past. It's a matter of raising the temps slowly, and every 5-10 degrees tossing in a little bit of cold water, then at the next 5-10 degree step, do it again, repeat until as dark as desired. It can take hours to make a dark syrup this way, but the results are spectacular.

The process of inverting the sugar with heat creates some complex stuff mixed in with the easy for yeast to digest inverted sugar chains. Effectively it still ferments like a sugar, but it becomes more then that because "magic".

The beer without the sugar does have head, it just doesn't stick around, because it doesn't have said stuff to provide some structure. It doesn't really lace the glass. Where the beers with the colored candi sugars, the head sticks around and it laces the glass.

Wow, that's neat experiment and it made Beer!

Very cool! I have done a similar experiment and enjoyed it. I would have to read my brew log for the details, but candi sugar and belgian yeast were part of it.

Whenever the wort is depleted off, you have the extra wheat, protein, and a few minerals that are then utilized in more than one way. More often than not the extras are utilized foraAnimal feed, canine food, mushroom substrate, or manure, just to give some examples of different purposes."