Dissolving Sugar properly

[Geoff Logan]

Hello all,
I'm in need of some advice. I'm brewing an Imperial Porter tomorrow and in it I need to dissolve 50lbs. of Haitian sugar which is VERY hard. I have a Pugsley/Austin system and I was thinking of using my Mash tun as the dissolving tank. I did a beer not long ago which had white sugar in it and I simply poured it into the boil slowly. However, at the end of the boil I had half of the sugar at the bottom of the kettle undissolved and burnt. Does anyone have advice? Thanks.

[kayemkerner]

...in the world of non-automation I've dissolved whatever needed in the final runnings and just added it to the boil as necessary....you can work with it in increments and be absolutley sure that it's dissolved before you add it...

[alesu]

Are you adding it slowly in the whirlpool? Also you could hydrate the sugar and cook it or warm the slurry in a 10 or 15 gal. brewpot until it is dissolved and add that to the whirlpool.

[Geoff Logan]

I've gotten a hold of a couple of 45 gallon pots from a local Italian Restaurant. Maybe I'll dissolve the sugar in these pots over a burner and then add the solution to the last few minutes of the boil. I'm am, however, still intrigued by the prospect of using hot water in the mash tun and then pumping it straight over.

[tariq khan]

What has worked for me in the past was adding it to the kettle before you run the wort off from the mash tun. It always completely dissolved....

Tariq (Big Ridge Brewery, Surrey, B.C.)

[grassrootsvt]

What size Pugsley system do you have? If it similar to the one that I worked on, you could use the whirlpooling option to get some momentum at the time that you add your sugar to ensure that it doesn't rest on the bottom (for future usage...)

If you can, just pull some boiling wort out of the kettle (via your drain valve) into a bucket, dissolve what sugar you can, and then dump it back into the kettle... This is what I do for nearly all sugar additions that require dissolving...

[drewseslu]

If you can, just pull some boiling wort out of the kettle (via your drain valve) into a bucket, dissolve what sugar you can, and then dump it back into the kettle... This is what I do for nearly all sugar additions that require dissolving...

This is what we do at one of the breweries I work for. Fill a 5 gallon bucket up halfway with wort, work in about 25lbs of sugar and add it back to the kettle.
With your hard Haitian sugar I would probably break out a homebrew kettle and try to melt it in there with some wort and pump/slop it back into the kettle.
BTW What is this Haitian sugar like? Where did you find it? I'm having a hard time locating large enough quantities of some exotic sugars.

[beertje46]

In my last brewery we used our hopback for dissolving sugar. Kettle bottom out to hopback, hopback drain to portable pump to whirlpool inlet. The portable pump didn't have a VF drive so it took a little time to get the valves set. Fill hopback with wort and establish flow, dump sugar into hopback slowly mix with 36" wire whisk from Sysco and pump back to kettle.

We used this method for meade and soda production with no problems or caramelization.

[Geoff Logan]

Thanks for all the advice! I settled on using a large pot from an Italian restaurant on a gas burner. I managed to get all fifty pounds dissolved in some of the last running's of wort and hot liquor. I had to use a hammer and chisel to break it up before placing it into the pot. Then I used a pitcher to scoop it into the kettle for the last 15 minutes of the boil. OG was 21.5 so I'm hoping for a 9% abv Imperial Porter. C'mon yeast, your turn! (I attached a couple pictures of my helper Robert with the pot and also a picture of just how hard this sugar is).

[beermkr]

All you had to do was call me and I would have told you how I did it last year... geez

Mike