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Kitchen Brewing: Making Brewer's Invert Syrup for Tawny's Burning Calamity Barleywine

Back in 2012, I did a post on making your own Candi Sugar for Belgian beers. Nine years later, it's time to make Brewer's Invert Syrup for British beers.

While these syrups are available commercially, they're tough to find in the US, as there are only a handful of homebrew shops that carry them. They're also not exactly cheap, so why not make your own?

The sugar I prefer to use for making Invert Syrup is Turbinado. Complexity is what I want from these syrups, and I feel that Turbinado, as well as other raw sugars, create more complex flavors than plain white table sugar does. However, table sugar works just fine. 

Here's the basic procedure for making one pound of Invert Syrup:
  1. Mix one pound of sugar with approximately 1 cup of water to make a thick syrup.
  2. Over Medium heat, gently stir the liquid until the sugar is dissolved. 
  3. Add 1/4tsp of Cream of Tartar. You can optionally add roughly 2Tbsp of Lyle's Golden Syrup at this step to help avoid crystalizing your syrup.
  4. Maintain Medium heat and slowly bring the mixture to a boil. 
  5. Keep boiling, and when the temperature reaches 236F(114C), you should have either a clear to slightly golden (table sugar), or a light amber (Turbinado or other raw cane sugar) syrup. 
  6. At this point, you can either stop, or continue heating. If you used raw sugar, the initial syrup will be roughly Invert Syrup #1.
  7. If you choose to keep going, Invert Syrup #2 should be reached around 260F(127C), and #3 at 280F(138C). I tend to stop at #3, as getting past 300F(149C) can get you into the territory of accidentally making hard candy.
  8. When the syrup is done, you can either add it straight to the brew kettle (my favorite), or put it in a mason jar. If you jar the syrup, store it somewhere cool.

The syrup for the beer below is an amber one that's in the ballpark of Invert Syrup #2.

My syrup is going into an English Barleywine that's a ramped up version of an Old Ale I brewed a few years ago. That beer was very loosely based on Fuller's 1845. What I have here is essentially a beer that's been inspired by a beer that was inspired by a beer. Seems simple enough.

Because beers like this can develop Port-like qualities as they age, I'm speeding the process up by introducing an oak spiral dipped in Tawny Port that will be added six weeks before bottling. I'm pretty confident it will do what I intend it to. I'll find out if that's the case in roughly six months.

As a final step, I'm bottle conditioning my beer using 6oz of Lyle's Golden Syrup, along with fresh White Labs WLP002 yeast (a.k.a. the Fuller's strain).  

My 5 gallon brew is below:

Grains:
10lbs Crisp Maris Otter
5lbs Muntons English Planet
1lb 6oz Fawcett Amber Malt
1lb 6oz Crisp Crystal 77
3oz Simpsons Chocolate Malt

Hops:
1.5oz Target (8.0% a.a.): 60 min
1.5oz Target (8.0% a.a.): 45 min 
1oz Kent Goldings (5.0% a.a.): 30 min
1oz Kent Goldings (5.0% a.a.): 15 min

Extras:
2lbs Homemade Brewer's Invert Syrup #2
1 Light Toast American Oak Spiral soaked in Tawny Port
6oz Lyle's Golden Syrup (Bottle Conditioning)

Total Boil Time:
120 min

Yeast:
White Labs WLP028 - Edinburgh Scottish Ale (Fermentation)
White Labs WLP002 - English Ale (Bottle Conditioning)
64oz Starter

Mash Schedule:
Saccharification Rest: 152F for 75 min
Mashout: 168F for 15 min

Original Gravity:
1.109
Estimated Final Gravity:
1.027

IBU: 58
SRM Color: 22

Fermentation Schedule:
3 Weeks Primary at 62F
11 Weeks Secondary
6 Weeks Secondary with Oak
1 Month or more Bottle Conditioning


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