ISO invert sugar recipe

[mostlylana]

Here is a great article on the commercial manufacture of invert sugar:

http://www.ensymm.com/pdf/ensymm_invert_sugar_production_abstract.pdf

They explain that it is difficult to get complete inversion using the acid + heat method of inverting sugar. To have complete inversion, use invertase.

Personally, I have been using Trimoline but I would like to make my own invert sugar using organic sugar.

Does anybody have a recipe for invert sugar using invertase? All of the previous links refer to recipes using acid + heat. What I'm unclear about when looking at the invert sugar process chart the above link provides at the end of the article, is whether or not the final inverted sugar product (produced with invertase) needs to be heated to inactivate the enzyme?

Thanks!

[Darienne]

There are so many different variables to consider. What invert sugar were you using (was this just concentrated glucose syrup?), and in what proportions?

I would ask the same question as paulraphael: how much invert sugar to how much sugar. I have used invert sugar in making ice cream, and it has performed very well...no crystals at all. I made the invert sugar using Chef Eddy's recipe, given earlier in this thread.

ps. the invert sugar was clear.

Edited October 22, 2010 by Darienne (log)

[frozendesserts]

Hi paulraphael, Darienne

I am referring to the invert sugar recipe I posted in the first post. The invert sugar yielded is more like simple syrup, light brown color in color.

I am making a non fat ice cream with soy milk, so the crystals got bigger with the absence of milk fats and milk solid. More like gelato, so I shall refer to the end product as gelato instead. I am trying to get the ice crystals to become smaller, like a nice smooth sorbet. Yes I know without fat, the texture of the gelato would be icy instead of creamy and smooth. Therefore I am experimenting with the different sugar.

I can't find trimoline in my local bakery supply store, not too keen on corn syrup if I can make invert sugar at home. So I bought liquid glucose from them instead. I am based in Malaysia. The flow and transparency does look like chef eddy's invert sugar but it is a hydrolysis product from starch, with brix 81%. I am quite curious on the brix of the invert sugar, cos that would definitely affect the amount to sub into the gelato if I would to use invert sugar in place of liquid glucose.

My local bakery supply store only carry one type of ice cream stabilizer with LBG, E410, E415 but even the tiniest amount made the ice cream taste funky. So stabilizer is out of question for now.

I seems to have good results with using liquid glucose only in the final product. But it is not sweet enough. Experimenting with sugar and liquid glucose now.

My experiment:

1 cup (250ml) unsweetened soy milk

30g liquid glucose

20g sugar

(Original recipe is 1/4 sugar)

2.75 tsp arrowroot

+ vanilla beans

Can anyone point me to online sources that explains how much liquid glucose can I sub into the recipe for best results, half of the weight of the sugar? Or is there a minimum amount of liquid glucose or invert sugar that should be sub according to the weight of the whole recipe for nicer gelato texture.

Lastly, the gelato is churned in a Cusinart ICE 50.

Thank you so much!

Cheers

[tan319]

http://www.amazon.com/Ice-Cream-Stabilizer-2-lb/dp/B00270TPVQ

the best one

http://www.pastrychef.com/search.asp?keyword=stabilizers&search.x=0&search.y=0&search=GO

good luck if you still need it, I was just "geezin" :-)

[Tri2Cook]

Liberties with naming foods are taken regularly (and I personally have no problem with that) but the first thing you need to keep in mind when doing your research is that non-dairy, non-fat means you're not making ice cream or gelato. You're working in the sorbet range of the frozen dessert spectrum. Also keep in mind that most commercial soy milk frozen desserts contain some type of oil to fill in for the dairy fat and a long list of stabilizers. They don't have that fluffy faux-ice cream texture due to some perfect balance of sugars. I think flavoring the soy milk with the vanilla beans and combining it somewhere around 70:30 with a neutral sorbet syrup would be a good starting place that is easily adjusted. Sticking strictly with the ingredients you're working with, you can make a sorbet syrup with (by volume) 1 part sucrose, 1 part water and 1/2 part glucose syrup.

Just out of curiosity, is the product icy straight out of the machine or only after some time in the freezer?

[frozendesserts]

Liberties with naming foods are taken regularly (and I personally have no problem with that) but the first thing you need to keep in mind when doing your research is that non-dairy, non-fat means you're not making ice cream or gelato. You're working in the sorbet range of the frozen dessert spectrum. Also keep in mind that most commercial soy milk frozen desserts contain some type of oil to fill in for the dairy fat and a long list of stabilizers. They don't have that fluffy faux-ice cream texture due to some perfect balance of sugars. I think flavoring the soy milk with the vanilla beans and combining it somewhere around 70:30 with a neutral sorbet syrup would be a good starting place that is easily adjusted. Sticking strictly with the ingredients you're working with, you can make a sorbet syrup with (by volume) 1 part sucrose, 1 part water and 1/2 part glucose syrup.

Thanks! will try the sorbet syrup method. My main focus should be stopping the ice crystals from growing bigger when I am just freezing it to let it harden up. I tried incorporating grapeseed oil into the soy milk too. Can still taste a hint of oil, not delicious hhahaha.

Just out of curiosity, is the product icy straight out of the machine or only after some time in the freezer?

My experiment with using only liquid glucose, yield a fairly firm soft serve flow, the crystals in quite small(I would describe it as sorbet from the store), the best of all the different combination of sugar and liquid glucose I tried. This texture is just right, right out of the machine. After freezing, the ice crystals grew bigger.

The combination of 30g liquid glucose + 20g sugar yields bigger crystals right out of the machine, compared with just glucose.

But they all melt when come in contact with air when spooning into plastic boxes.

[paulraphael]

It can also be difficult to get good texture without a high enough proportion of nonfat solids, either with ice cream and sorbet. The solids, more than anything else, provide freezing point suppression; they help keep the recipe from freezing hard as a brick. In sorbets the solids typically come from the fruit or other flavor ingredients. In this recipe they only come from the soy milk and the arrowroot ... probably not enough. Vanilla is so concentrated that it essentially gives you none.

You want nonfat solids to be around 33% by weight. The traditional ingredient to boost solids is nonfat dry milk, but if you're making a non-dairy recipe you'll have to try something else. Soy protein powder? Might work. Flavors with more stuff in them (fruit purees, etc.) will make the job easier in this regard.

There are also stabilizers that will work more efficiently than arrowroot, like gelatin, xanthan gum, and locust bean gum. Or you can buy a commercial sorbet stabilizing blend.

Counterintuitively, fats don't influence ice crystal suppression or freezing point, so adding oil probably won't help solve this. Fat obviously influences texture in other ways, though.

Edited October 25, 2010 by paulraphael (log)

[Tri2Cook]

Gelatin is a great suggestion if it doesn't have to be vegetarian. I use a commercial stabilizer and glucose powder in my sorbet syrup if I'm going to use anything other than a basic sugar/water syrup but both of those have already been ruled out. I've made successful rice and almond milk sherbets many times but they included stabilizer, glucose powder and a small percentage of cream.

[frozendesserts]

Hi Tri2Cook,

Are you adding the glucose powder and stablizer to the syrup instead of instead of directly to the sherbet base? WHy is this so?

Does your commercial stabilizer have a weird taste if used in large amount?

Hi paulraphael,

I tried with Soy Protein Powder, less crystals but the taste is too beany. And the Powder does not seems to melt, the end product is rather gritty.

Is milk powder/ cream powder more soluble in liquid? Seems like most commercial ice cream has milk powder or cream powder in it. But they don't taste gritty, what's the secret?

[Tri2Cook]

Stabilizers shouldn't be used in large amounts. 1% of the total batch by weight is pushing the upper end with most stabilizers. Even if it didn't mess with the taste, it will start to creep into gummy territory. I'm not sure what we're talking about as "even the tiniest amount" but, for the batch size you're experimenting with, I'd probably start at .5 - 1 gram of stabilizer at most and adjust from there.

I make my sorbet syrup by cooking water, sugar, glucose powder and stabilizer together to dissolve the glucose and hydrate the stabilizer. I do it that way because I can make large batches that hold well in the fridge and allow me to do on-the-fly experimenting and emergency batches by simply adding some of the syrup to whatever flavor base I want to use.

The milk or cream powder will dissolve in liquid. Some require heat, some don't. I didn't realize dairy was ok for the project, for some reason I thought it wasn't.

[frozendesserts]

Thanks for sharing the tip on mixing stabilizer in the syrup. I had about 1/8 tsp of the stabilizer with 250ml of soy milk. Had to use a spoon measurement because I don't have a scale that can go up to 0.1grams measurement. I could only see some obvious change to the texure, a little gummy and less icy after adding 1/4 tsp of the stabilizer to the soy milk base.

No I am not using dairy in the project. Just curious as to how the powders could be fully soluble in the liquid. Because the milk powder that I had experienced, doesn't dissolve fully in water. The soy protein powder can still be detected after heating, and letting it chill for 12 hours.

[GRiker]

On 11/23/2009 at 7:37 PM, Scout_21 said:

Here are two recipes from Wybauw's Fine Chocolates 2:

750 g Sucrose

250 g Water (1)

22 g tartaric acid

22 g Water (2)

24 g baking soda

24 g water (3)

Heat and dissolve sugar and the water (1) to 93 C (200 F). Dissolve the tartaric acid in the water (2). Add to heated sugar/water mixture and keep the temperature at 93C (200F) for one hour. Dissolve the baking soda in water(3) and add to the sugar syrup to neutralize the syrup. The pH must be 4.5. Cool the inverted sugar as quickly as possible in order to avoid major discoloration.

Recipe 2

750 g Sucrose

250 g Water (1)

32 g Citric acid

32 g Water (2)

34 g baking soda

34 g water (3)

Proceed as described above.

I haven't tried these recipes myself but the pic from the book looks exactly like the trimoline I purchased.... I hope this helps too.

 

I used Recipe 2 listed above.  

 

Attempt #1: I first tried putting the first two ingredients into a quart jar in a sous vide set to slightly over 200F to keep the syrup at 200F.  Then when the syrup was at 200F (this took a while), I added the citric acid and water then loosely capped the quart jar with a plastic lid.  I kept the sous vide at 200F for an hour.  Then after the hour I removed the jar onto a towel covered counter and added the baking soda/water mixture.  THAT was a mistake!  Citric Acid + sodium bicarbonate = sodium citrate + water + CO2!  It's the carbon dioxide that I forgot about.  See image of sugar boiling out over the top and on the towel!

 

I decided the kids could use this syrup for lemonade and moved on to attempt #2.  

 

Attempt #2 consisted of putting sucrose and water into a 5 quart pan, dissolving the sugar up to 200F, added citric acid/water and then trying to keep the mixture at 200F for an hour.  This required way too much hands on.  I put my probe thermometer into the pot and set my thermometer's alarms at 195F and 205F.  Despite my best efforts, I kept having to adjust the temp to get it to stay in that range.  Then the nagging questions of ?how close does it have to be for 200F for one hour? what happens if it's not etc...?

 

So, I didn't actually make an attempt #3 (feeling mostly satisfied with the result from attempt #2) but when I do, this is what I will do.

*Heat 250g water in a quart mason jar (not too hot, just to get the dissolving moving along a little) then add 750 grams sucrose.  Stir

*Heat water in 8 quart pot to 200F

*Remove pot from heat and add sous vide set to 202F or so (some heat is lost to the atmosphere)

*Add the quart jar to the sous vide.  

*Stir to dissolve the sugar.

*When sugar is dissolved and syrup temp is 200F, add citric acid/water and stir to combine.

*Lightly cap the mason jar with a plastic lid

*Let run for 1 hour

*After 1 hour, remove quart jar from the Sous Vide and empty contents into large heat proof bowl

*Slowly add baking soda/water mixture

*Let cool completely before transferrng to a storage container

 

Seems like this would take advantage of the rapid heating available from the stove (my sous vide took a long time to heat to 200F), the hands off 1 hour cook time, and then more space afforded by a pan.  

 

The result was about a quart of amber colored liquid with a very slight acidic sugary taste. I thought I wouldn't taste any acidic flavor at all, but I seem to just a little.

 

Hope this helps anyone else trying to DIY.  I'm just trying out some confection recipes that need invert sugar.  I'm sure there are local sources less expensive than Amazon, but I could get food grade citric acid and make pounds and pounds of invert sugar for the cost of a pound or two of invert sugar online, so I ventured to make my own.  

[keychris]

I don't see how recipe one above will give you a pH of 4.5, you basically have equal reaction quantities of acid (0.15mols) and base (0.29mols) (given one tartaric acid reacts with two bicarb)

and the second recipe has vastly more bicarb compared to citric acid (which is a 1:1 reaction) (0.17mols of acid vs 0.4mols of base) so that one wouldn't be acidic either!

my science brain really dislikes things like "neutralise the syrup" then the next bit is "pH must be 4.5" - that's not neutralised 🤣

 

(mols is a measurement in chemistry to compare the amounts of chemicals that are different sizes)

[GRiker]

@keychris  Interesting observation. Last night I tested my invert sugar using litmus paper.  Interestingly enough, the pH measures around 6, so slightly acidic.  Not what I expected.

 

When I posed this query to my PhD Food Chemist neighbor he told me that the reaction is not quite as simple as it seems when you simply work out the mols of each.  
 

I'll try to distill some points.

 

Of note the acid is only acting as a catalyst for the hydrolysis of the sucrose into glucose and fructose.  Most online recipes are not attempting to neutralize the acid with a base.  My friends opinion was that you would only reduce any of the acid if the tartness were objectionable.  It does make me wonder what is the pH of commercial Trimoline or invert sugar.  

 

I had a batch that didn't work so well where the pot boiled over and all the baking soda didn't get dissolved into the solution.  I did taste that one and it is very tart. It has a pH of about 4.

 

pH tells you how acidic or basic a solution is, but it does not tell you how strong it is - that would be pKa which I can't easily measure.  However, when looking at the solution, you have 1000g of sucrose and water, and about 30 g of citric acid.  My friends comment is that a 3% solution is probably quite a bit stronger than you need it to be to act as the catalyst in this reaction.  I wondered about decreasing the acid and then how would you know that you had successfully inverted the sugar (aside from actually measuring the the inverted light reflection of the molecule!).  The color change from clear to amber seems to be a good indication that the inversion has taken place as both glucose and fructose are more sensitive to heat than sucrose.  

 

Much of our conversation was over my head, but I tried to reach back to my college chemistry to understand it. Some recipes use lemon juice.  Lemon juice isn't just pure acid so it has some buffering affect - not totally sure the affect on the final product.  Just putting it out there.  

 

When I look at other online recipes for invert sugar syrup, I'm seeing significantly less citric acid added to the mix, like on the way less than 10 gram range.

I was attracted to Wybauw's recipe because it was so scientific with exact amounts and came from a reputable source.  Many of the other online recipes talk about adding 'the juice of one lemon' etc. - how precise is that!  However, after a bit more study I'm wondering if his recipe for invert sugar is not as scientific as I originally thought.  

 

The next time I try making invert sugar, I believe I will poke around online some more and use less citric acid.  I know, I know, I could just buy  it, but where's the fun in that!

[teonzo]

Beware that sucrose inversion is not linear. If after X amount of time you get a 50% inversion, then after 2X time you won't get 100% inversion, but 75%: every X amount of time the remaining sucrose gets inverted with a 50% rate. So your inversion rate goes this way:
1X ----> 50%
2X ----> 75%
3X ----> 87.5%
4X ----> 93.75%
5X ----> 96.875%

 

X depends on temperature and pH. The higher the temperature, the lower X. The lower the pH, the lower X. You can find some tables online, like this one in Italian.
 

This means that at home you don't have exact control on the inversion rate. If you use the boiling method then you start to get some browning after around 1.5-2.5 hours (depends on many factors), well before you reach a high conversion rate. Reaching the browning point has not much sense, you get different molecules than the ones you want. Stopping before the browning point means having an unknown conversion rate at medium levels, plus a syrup with lots of water.
So ask yourself if you really need invert sugar for the recipes you are planning to make, and if that invert sugar can be of the home made kind. Professional recipes that call for invert sugar need the industrial one (conversion rate nearly 100%, minimum amount of water), they are balanced for that invert sugar, if you use the homemade one then you go way out of balance and risk ruining the final result. Non professional recipes that can use homemade invert sugar are really rare. The only case that comes to mind is for candying citrus peels (or candying of other fruits), where a syrup made with invert sugar gives a better result than a syrup with only sucrose, and if the conversion rate is 80% and not 99% then it's not a problem. In all other cases it's much much better if you buy invert sugar for professional uses, nowadays it's easy to get even for the amateurs, it's cheap, it's the only way to get the real stuff you need for the recipes that call for it.

 

 

 

Teo

 

[GRiker]

48 minutes ago, teonzo said:

Beware that sucrose inversion is not linear. If after X amount of time you get a 50% inversion, then after 2X time you won't get 100% inversion, but 75%: every X amount of time the remaining sucrose gets inverted with a 50% rate. So your inversion rate goes this way:
1X ----> 50%
2X ----> 75%
3X ----> 87.5%
4X ----> 93.75%
5X ----> 96.875%

 

X depends on temperature and pH. The higher the temperature, the lower X. The lower the pH, the lower X. You can find some tables online, like this one in Italian.
 

This means that at home you don't have exact control on the inversion rate. If you use the boiling method then you start to get some browning after around 1.5-2.5 hours (depends on many factors), well before you reach a high conversion rate. Reaching the browning point has not much sense, you get different molecules than the ones you want. Stopping before the browning point means having an unknown conversion rate at medium levels, plus a syrup with lots of water.

Thus the question...how do you really know you've inverted all the sugar when you're doing in at home?  And your answer that you can't really know. 

 

48 minutes ago, teonzo said:

So ask yourself if you really need invert sugar for the recipes you are planning to make, and if that invert sugar can be of the home made kind. Professional recipes that call for invert sugar need the industrial one (conversion rate nearly 100%, minimum amount of water), they are balanced for that invert sugar, if you use the homemade one then you go way out of balance and risk ruining the final result.

Good point.  Thanks for that insight. 

[paulraphael]

Interesting about the time/temp relationship. I'm not sure I use invert syrup in anything where the difference between 70% and 99% inversion would be serious (I just use pure dextrose and fructose in ice creams and sorbets now ... much easier). 

 

But in the interest of doing a better job, how do you think a pressure cooker would work? Will acidulated sugar brown at 120°C?