Anyone here ever use caramel in beer? I mean caramel the ingredient, not Kraft caramels or Smucker's caramel sauce. You take sugar and a little water, and you burn it in a saucepan until you get a delicious brown liquid. It's used in things like flan. It's just burned table sugar. Period.
I asked about this somewhere else, and the discussion instantly descended into the Hell of Unsuccessful Internet Pedantry, with people Googling and scrambling, trying to redefine "caramel."
I like a little caramel flavor in some beers. I was thinking that even if the sugar remaining in the caramel got eaten by yeast, the new ingredients created by the burning might remain and flavor the beer a little.
Seems like it should work in any recipe calling for candi sugar or table sugar.
I left some Sierra Nevada Torpedo in my un-air-conditioned workshop for at least a year, and then I chilled some and drank it anyway, because that's how I am. It seemed to have developed a nice caramel flavor. I liked it better than Torpedo fresh from the store. I set it aside to age now. There was also a beer I liked when I was in college. Altenmuenster something or other, I think.