As a writer, brewer and marketing guy, I love words. Words have the power to convey thoughts, inspire the imagination and reveal hidden secrets, so I don’t take it likely when I say this: We just have to kill one.
Because the chemical and electrical characteristics of caramel interact strongly with the products in which they’re used, caramel is not just caramel.
I feel a little bad, because it’s not even an English word. It’s French. In the context of brewing, candi describes a sugar used primarily in Belgian brewing. But which sugar? It’s a problem. When a word comes out of someone’s mouth and enters someone else’s ear with a completely different meaning, it’s time to check the lexicon. Popular usage, as we all know, trumps the dusty pages of some old book, so lexicide is the only answer. “Candi” has to go.
Here are the details and why they matter. There are two types of sugar that may be called candi: large rocks of crystallized beet sugar, and caramelized sugar syrup. In general—and this is undoubtedly true historically—sucre candi (or kandij zuiker in Flemish) refers to the caramelized sugar syrup. But American home- and craftbrewers who use the term are invariably referring to the rocks.
This miscommunication leads to grave errors despite the noblest efforts to brew authentically. The two ingredients bear little resemblance to each other save the sucrose molecules at their core.
