Thinking on the recent AK thread, I've been wondering about invert sugar. I understand in breaks bonds in sucrose into fructose and glucose, but what impact does this have on the beer? I also understand sucrose to be 100% fermentable - presumably its component parts provide a different experience for the yeast, therefor providing a different experience for us. But I'm curious about specifics. What could I expect to notice using table sugar vs Invert No.1? Raw sugar? Finally, @hopfenunmaltz posted this recipe for invert sugar yesterday http://www.unholymess.com/blog/beer-brewing-info/making-brewers-invert/comment-page-1 It calls for lactic acid, but I've seen recipes that use citric acid, ascorbic acid, cream of tartar or lemon juice. Would there be significant differences between these different acids?
The idea is that the process of inverting the sugar add flavors (Caramelization and/or Maillard reactions) that you wouldn't get from using raw sugar. There's also an argument that it's easier for the yeast to eat glucose and fructose than to eat sucrose (true) and that this will impact the flavor (not so sure about that).
I don't think there will be a major flavor impact from the acid used there is not much added. The residual is probably under the threshold. Invert per the recipe would be made from a Demerara or Turbinado sugar, which is not as refined as table sugar. I have used Lyle's Golden Syrup (about invert1) in Bitter recipes, and it does add a little toffee flavor.
The thinking behind that is that the yeast do not have to break the bond using invertase, so they are not as stressed. Or something like that, which I read a long time ago. Some say there is no difference. Some say the heat in the boil will break the bonds. I have not noticed off flavors from adding table sugar to the boil.
True, if you do it right! I've screwed up and added too much tartaric to invert (for non brewing uses) before. Not bad, but certainly noticable. Made sense once I thought through that heat + acid was a catalyst -- don't scale linearly as your batch sizes get bigger! I usually use white cane sugar. It's a personal preference but I think the raw/demerara sugars end up tasting more smokey/charred/burnt while white sugar gives a clean round, toffee/biscuit flavor.
So how do you scale a batch? I made some for my Belgian Blondes, took the recipe for 1/2# sugar and just stepped up the whole recipe by 5 to get my 2.5#. Way too much water for sure.
You need the molasses and minerals in demerara to make the british brewing syrup needed for the ak and other historic recipes. It absolutely should not taste smokey/charred/burnt - I presume it probably does burn quicker than refined sugar but you shouldn't be letting it get above 240F, so it won't burn. It basically runs through light to dark fruit flavours as it gets darker
Like I mentioned -- mostly for culinary uses (Lyle's runs over $18/litre). I've taken white sugar pretty dark -- I'll have to give turbanado another go.
I didn't take exact notes, but I think the original recipe I followed was like 2C sugar / 1 tsp cream of tartar. I ended up with like 9 cups sugar and 1 Tbsp cream of tartar. Too much. Dialing that back to like 9 Cups / 2 tsp was much better. Goal was to clone this stuff: http://www.buderimginger.com/products/ginger-refresher-750ml
Yeah mine was 1/2# Sugar to 1 qt water to 1/8 t Citric Acid. Multiplied it all by 5, and there was way too much water. Ended up boiling for almost 2 hours to get it down to 2 qts. I wanted to only do it for 40 minutes. Next time I will start with a much smaller amount of water, maybe half.
