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Author Topic: Making Invert Syrup with Evaporated Cane Juice  (Read 3120 times)

Offline skyler

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Making Invert Syrup with Evaporated Cane Juice
« on: July 21, 2011, 03:56:55 pm »
Having made a simple invert syrup before for Belgian and British ales, I thought I would make some invert syrup with evaporated cane juice to put into my Belgian Ale. I used the same process as usual - 5 min boil with a teaspoon of lemon juice per lb of sugar... but this time I have floaties (the pot was spotless-clean). Should I strain them? Should I just use the syrup as-is? Should I just use this syrup for Mojitos instead? Has anyone had this issue before with raw sugar?

Here's what the pitcher looks like:


And here's a closeup of the floaties:

Offline tschmidlin

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Re: Making Invert Syrup with Evaporated Cane Juice
« Reply #1 on: July 22, 2011, 12:31:21 am »
I would just throw it all in.  It might be some coagulated protein from the raw sugar, but it's not going to hurt anything.  You boiled it, it's fine.
Tom Schmidlin

Offline euge

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Re: Making Invert Syrup with Evaporated Cane Juice
« Reply #2 on: July 22, 2011, 12:40:57 am »
Does the invert sugar really do anything better than straight cane sugar? Is it a mouthfeel thing in the finished product?
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Offline skyler

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Re: Making Invert Syrup with Evaporated Cane Juice
« Reply #3 on: July 23, 2011, 01:34:23 am »
Well, it bakes very differently than ordinary sugar.

Offline denny

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Re: Making Invert Syrup with Evaporated Cane Juice
« Reply #4 on: July 23, 2011, 09:56:19 am »
Well, it bakes very differently than ordinary sugar.

Are you baking your beer?  :)

In my limited taste testing, I couldn't tell a difference between invert syrup and plain old sugar.
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Offline The Professor

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Re: Making Invert Syrup with Evaporated Cane Juice
« Reply #5 on: July 23, 2011, 11:15:14 am »
Well, it bakes very differently than ordinary sugar.

Are you baking your beer?  :)

In my limited taste testing, I couldn't tell a difference between invert syrup and plain old sugar.

Ditto here.  Some early texts on homebrewing emphasized using invert sugar (or converting table sugar) as an important quality step.  As Denny pointed out,   experimentation pretty much blew away the "necessity" to use invert.

Same thing with corn sugar versus cane sugar as an adjunct.  After comparing multiple batches  I found no difference in the results using cane sugar as opposed to the more expensive dextrose in beers that use a sugar adjunct.
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Offline tschmidlin

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Re: Making Invert Syrup with Evaporated Cane Juice
« Reply #6 on: July 23, 2011, 03:25:08 pm »
It could easily be strain dependent.  Didn't I read that addition of glucose will enhance the clove (or was it banana?) flavor from weizen yeasts?  You might not get the same effect from sucrose, but I haven't tested it.
Tom Schmidlin

Offline skyler

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Re: Making Invert Syrup with Evaporated Cane Juice
« Reply #7 on: July 23, 2011, 06:22:55 pm »
One of the reason I like using syrups rather than sugar is that I can add a syrup after the beer has chilled or even during fermentation (useful when I am splitting a batch and want two distinctly different beers). Now, I could make a strong simple syrup as easily as I could make invert sugar, but the sciency explanation for using invert sugar seemed to make sense, so I went with it. I am also quite fond of British Flapjacks (sorta like cross between a granola bar and candy), and they require invert sugar (gotta great recipe if anyone's interested). But my experience has also shown no problems or off flavors when I have used cane sugar, corn sugar, invert sugar, or honey - so presumably they are all 99% the same thing when it comes down to it.