My next beer is going to be a Strong Belgian Ale. What makes a Belgian Strong different from any other strong Ale? Belgian Candi Sugar of course. I did not to bother try to shop for this when I know that most homebrewers just make it themselves. Following another homebrewer’s blog I managed to create about a 1.5lbs of Amber Candi sugar which I plan to use in my next homebrew.
I simply took 1.5lbs of sugar, 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and enough water to make it a syrup.
Keep an eye on the temperature!
From this I brought it to a rolling 275F and managed to keep the temperature around this for about 20 minutes until I reached the desired colour. As the temperature got higher I used small amounts of water to cool it back down to 275F.
I brought the temperature up to 300F and moved the boiling syrup to a pan covered in wax paper. Here I let it cool for a couple hours.
Finally I smashed it apart and tried in vain to remove the wax paper. Unfortunately I could not get it off the candi so I am going to need to figure out how to separate them later.
How the hell am I going to get all that wax paper off?