[Capt Zero]

My favorite beers come from  the Belgian Trappist breweries, I've had a go in the past but never had the Belgian candy sugar that they use. So today I thought lets have a go at making some.

I started off with 1kg of table sugar with a small cup of cold water. On too a medium heat you bring the mixture up to between 260f (126c) and 275f (135c).....this is when you add a quarter of a teaspoon of citric acid.



The acid reacts on the sugar molecules and they undergo a hydrolysis reaction which will break down the sugar into it's two main glucose and fructose molecules.



You now hold the mixture at that for around 20mins, by now the sugar is  inverted After this time the longer you hold it at these temperatures of  260f / 275f the darker the candy will go. Now I wanted medium colour for my next brew so I held it for around another 10mins. At the colour you want all you do is turn the heat up to full, raise the temperature to the "Hard crack" which is 306f (152c). I held it there for maybe 1min, then you pour it into a baking paper lined tray to cool.

Hey presto....1kg of Amber Belgian candy

[compostqueen]

So now you use it to make your beer?  Could you just break me a bit off first 

[Capt Zero]

  can you imagine just how sweet it would be,  thankfully I don't have a sweet tooth...but it will make an excellent brew.

[compostqueen]

You'd only need a bit then!  I was just pondering on applications for it other than beer as I don't imbibe meself    Beer making is so interesting though. I think it's a fantastic process and I visited a local brewery to see how it's done. I went home with bags of spent hops for the compost and never touched a drop. 

I have made barm for bread making and have used bottle conditioned beer to make a bread starter. Brewing and bread are closely allied after all

Good luck with it