Stout Guy Brewing Techniques - Dark Candi Syrup Test



April 2006 - Just freshly imported from the fine folk at Dark Candi Inc is a traditional Belgian ingredient that's rumored to be used all across the brewing world in Belgium including Westvleteren. To get a sense of how much gravity and color and flavor you can get from a bottle, I went and brewed up a 5.5 gallon batch of Transumptum Acerbus. Here are the pics.

The test setup: A test tube rack with sanitized test tubes to hold samples during the test. One pound of white sugar for extra gravity and the 500ml bottle of Dark Candi Syrup (weighing 1.5lbs or about 1.4 ounce (wt) per ounce (volume). My prediction of sugar contribution based up various figures stated by the importers is 1.061 (or about 16 pts for 5.5 gallons and the whole bottle)
After boiling for 70 minutes, I pulled a small sample into a sanitized test tube and took a gravity reading with a refractometer. The refractometer measured a gravity of 17.8B (or 1.070). Stirring vigorously, the Dark Candi Syrup was throughly blended into the wort. The bottle was rinsed with hot wort to collect everything. After cycling through some wort to ensure mixing a second sample was pulled. The refractometer measured that sample as 20.4B (1.081). Notice the slightly darker color in the test tube. (The next tube over is filled with sanitizer and the final tube is filled with a sample from a second bottle of candi syrup)
To move away from transmissive color and get a sense of absolute reflective color, the tubes are shot against white paper towels. On the left, with flash. On the right, no flash.
Summary - While we wait until we can draw our final conclusions, please note that the syrup seemed to add about 11 pounts of gravity to the wort when it was about 6 gallons or about 66 pts. A little lower than I was expecting.


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