EBC colours of household sugars

[peebee]

I've seen as list of sugars and their "EBC" colour ratings somewhere but can't find it now I want it.

Anyone know of such a list? After the likes of "raw" minimally refined cane-sugars like molasses syrup, golden syrup, muscovado sugars, molasses sugar, etc. UK ones (sugar names do seem to be different around the world).

 

[foxbat]

At least some of those are in the Beersmith ingredients database. I'm sure the numbers are only correct for a certain manufacturer though.

 

[peebee]

At least some of those are in the Beersmith ingredients database ...

Thanks @foxbat. Although that's an excellent example of why I stressed "UK" sugars. "Origins" may say "United Kingdom" and "Belgium", but they really mean "US"! Most Brits will scratch their heads over UK "Turbinado" sugar and UK Dememera sugar at only 3.9EBC. And no Belgian brewery is going to understand "Candi Sugar" (at whatever colour). No Muscovado? "Molasses" at only 157.9EBC?

Our sugar descriptions and colour definitions just do not match the US ones. (I.E. the numbers are only correct for a certain country, and in this case, they mean US).

 

[Sadfield]

Substitute Demerara for Turbinado and for muscavado for Demarera, respectively, when using UK sugars.

 

[peebee]

I'm going to have to do this the hard way by precisely and accurately ... using my dodgy eyesight!

Graham Wheeler reckoned Tesco's "Muscovado sugar" is about 600EBC. I should be able to roughly extrapolate mixtures of Muscovado and plain white sugar to get colours close to other sugars and determine the EBC of that sugar.

Sounds like a lot of work?

Graham wrote: ↑
Tue Jul 05, 2011 11:47 pm
Brewer's Invert sugar is made from raw, unrefined cane sugar; so is Muscovado sugar - it is made from the same stuff.


Tesco's Muscovado sugar is, or was at one time, 600 EBC, I have had it measured in the past; that is directly equivalent to brewers' invert No. 4. All you have to do is dilute Muscovado with ordinary household cane sugar linearly to match the colour of the brewers' invert that you are targeting. I am 75% certain that Muscovado sugar is already invert; as far as I can ascertain from the web, the acid extraction method inverts the raw sugar. Certainly, Tesco's Muscovado is seriously hygroscopic, which leads me to believe that it is invert. The household sugar obviously will not be invert. You can invert the mixture it by simmering it with acid if you like.

However, the reason for brewers traditionally using invert is partly because raw sugar is cheaper than refined, but mostly because of the draconian Excise rules surrounding sugar in a brewery. Even when I was involved with fledgling breweries in the 80s - 90s, the sugar book and the 'bonded' (and locked) sugar store was the first thing that the Excise man audited. All sugar had to be traceable back to source, and the source had to be a registered brewers' sugar supplier. If white Tate and Lyle was discovered, questions would be asked and threats would be made. It is amazing how paranoid Excise were about sugar, even then, and even though they did their gravity and volume dip on almost every brew.

Anyway, the reason for the diatribe of the previous paragraph is that there really is not any good scientific reason for inverting the sugar - it is a matter of tradition and at one time a matter of cost and convenience.

(TIP: The little arrow next to his name links you to the original posting on Jim's; note it's 2011!).

 

[Sadfield]

Graham Wheeler reckoned Tesco's "Muscovado sugar" is about 600EBC

Well colour me suprised.

 

[Sadfield]

You could steep some crystal of known EBC and then dissolve some of the sugar you intend to use to a matching hue. Then compare gravities. Or the other way match the gravities and compare the colour extraction.

 

[peebee]

You could steep some crystal of known EBC and then dissolve some of the sugar you intend to use to a matching hue. ...

Humm ... I won't dare go there. Mixing grain and sugar EBC values that is. I just got a hint of all the business about wave lengths of light, etc. Quite enough to scare the pants off me, so I decided my comparisons will be between different sugars and no way will I introduce grains too. Anyway, I've loads of shades of raw sugars, so I don't need go there.


If you haven't guessed, this is all about reaching a "plan" to create coloured "invert sugars" without any spending hours over boiling pots of syrup or using any heat at all for that matter. Classic PeeBee lunacy! You'll love it (or despise it?): Beers (late 19th Century and 20th Century) - Page 3 - Home Brew Forum. (Notice I learnt from Graham in the brief time I knew him - virtually only that is: Immensely long forum posts and a skill of, inadvertently in my case, really pi$$ing off Ron Pattinson ).

 

[Sadfield]

If you haven't guessed, this is all about reaching a "plan" to create coloured "invert sugars" without any spending hours over boiling pots of syrup or using any heat at all for that matter.

I hear you. I have a friend at homebrew club that says doing it the oven, takes away a lot of that, but I still can't be bothered.

Awaiting a Belgian tripel to condition that I used a mix of golden Syrup and Date sugar in, and might try the later in a Bitter to see what it offers.

 

[Erik The Anglophile]

I have been making Invert syrups by the caramellisation method, using 1kg billingtons demerara, 1L of water, 2ml lactic acid. Adding the sugar and acid to warm water to dissolv, heat to 115c, add about 0.5g sodium bicarbonate to stop the inversion then chucked it in to the oven at 120c for 3hrs to make #3.
This is still inverted sugar, maybe not exactly a replica of what was used in the old days, but it makes tasty beer.
But how would one go about making it the "proper" way?
And how to make it concentrated without simmering and not just end up with a bunch of sticky sugar water?
I have Billingtons demerara, some of their light and dark muscovado sugars at home reserved for brewing so some experimenting adding a dash of dark musco to demerara could be done

 

[peebee]

I have been making Invert syrups by the caramellisation method, using 1kg billingtons demerara, 1L of water, 2ml lactic acid. Adding the sugar and acid to warm water to dissolv, heat to 115c, add about 0.5g sodium bicarbonate to stop the inversion then chucked it in to the oven at 120c for 3hrs to make #3.
This is still inverted sugar, maybe not exactly a replica of what was used in the old days, but it makes tasty beer.
But how would one go about making it the "proper" way?
And how to make it concentrated without simmering and not just end up with a bunch of sticky sugar water?
I have Billingtons demerara, some of their light and dark muscovado sugars at home reserved for brewing so some experimenting adding a dash of dark musco to demerara could be done

And I don't doubt it makes "tasty beer"! Only a few weeks ago I was doing a similar thing, even buying an "Instantpot" (Airfryer version) because it was more precise at holding the temperature than a domestic oven. The other difference was using Lyle's Golden Syrup to skip past the "inversion" business (GS is "partially inverted" but will contain enough fructose to colour the syrup to #3). It is fructose you are caramelising to get the colour, glucose and sucrose need much higher temperatures to colour.

But I only made "#2" before figuring out this was not adding up (I'm making "historical recreations" of beer, so it was important not to go off at a tangent making "invert sugar"). I'd already figured the only purpose of "inverting" was to provide fructose for caramelising (fructose has no obvious advantage over sucrose or glucose otherwise - it has other advantages in syrups, but I don't want to make syrups). But making "invert" from "household" sugars is the reason for this thread: I'm searching for the answers to the same questions you are asking! But I can answer the "sticky sugar water" question: There will be no dissolving the sugars before chucking them in the boiling wort. There will be no "inverting" of sugar; why would you do this? (Don't answer that without knowing the verifiable reason for doing it). I just want the proportions of various sugars that will emulate the colour and flavours of "invert sugars" like the Ragus ones.

And if that sounds unlikely, it's exactly what Ragus themselves are doing with their "Brublocks" (glucose blocks coloured and flavoured with molasses).

 

[Erik The Anglophile]

Maybe I am better off using a 50/50 demerara/light musco mix for my paler beers, and using the caramellised invert syrup for darker ones where the more savoury flavour it provides may be better suited.
The reason I have wished to invert sugar is because that is what was done back in the day, and I try to brew historically inspired Brittish ales, if I can get by for most brews without doing it and adding various varieties of raw cane sugar, even better.

 

[foxbat]

And if that sounds unlikely, it's exactly what Ragus themselves are doing with their "Brublocks" (glucose blocks coloured and flavoured with molasses).

At risk of asking daft question of the day but isn't this a process you yourself could do quite easily (glucose + molasses)?

 

[peebee]

At risk of asking daft question of the day but isn't this a process you yourself could do quite easily (glucose + molasses)?

That's what I'm working up to.

Probably not glucose (too expensive to us and no benefit?) and "molasses" from whatever is providing the best result. "Molasses" as a generic term, like what makes light muscovado brown and dark muscovado browner still, not specific brands of "molasses" in a jar that just restricts you to one flavour (the likes of Ragus have plenty of diverse types of "molasses" available to them, we must make do with what we can lay our hands on). "Molasses" shouldn't be thought of as a "single thing", but multiple "things" with loads of possibilities suiting any imagination. It's the ideas like caramelised sugar that dictate a plainly daft "unified" idea of what "invert sugar" should be (tying people to endless un-necessary hours of watching boiling sugar syrup) that I want to debunk, not become another dictator.

So, not a "daft question"!



You can probably tell, I'm a bit annoyed at having once been suckered into those "plainly daft" ideas myself.