I’m trying to compile a list of sugars used in brewing. Hit me with some ideas!
I’ve used the following:
Cane sugar (refined and raw)
Rice syrup
Corn sugar
Honey
Maple syrup
Candi sugar (rocks)
Candy syrup
Succanat
Demerara
Brown sugar
Probably others, but these ones spring to mind. Does molasses count as a sugar?
I’ve used:
evaporated cane juice (natural sugar)
Maple syrup
Honey
Coconut sugar
Date sugar
I guess that’s about it. suddenly I feel so un-experimental ;D
**Edit to Add **
also plain old brown sugar (dark and light)and molasses although I don’t know if that counts.
I’ve used low dextrose corn syrup (I got a free bucket from work). It’s not very sweet; could count it as a starch rather than a sugar, that I put into the mash.
Invert sugar (aka Lyle’s Golden Syrup)
Lactose
Jaggery
Piloncilo
Homemade invert sugar.
Did you ever hear of high maltose corn sugar? That’s what they use at Yuengling in Tampa.
Nope, never have.
Thanks to everybody! You’ve each come up with at least one I’ve forgotten or hadn’t known about. Keep 'em coming, although I’m mainly interested in ones homebrewers can get their hands on.
Surprised nobody mentioned tubinado, but I believe it is pretty much the same as demeara
Edit: is maltodextrin considered a sugar?
I brewed a beer once years ago using 100 percent maple sap as the liquid. Wasn’t good but I did it. Not sure there was much sugar in it.
Candi syrup (light, med, and dark)
Candi (rock, back in the day)
Maple syrup
Demerara
Piloncilo
Brown Sugar (lt and dark)
Cane sugar
Corn sugar
Honey
Molasses
Turbinado
Muscovado sugar. Stronger flavors.
I also have some Palm sugar which has a rich taste, but have not used.
I’ve used Agave and the others that were mentioned.
How about:
Beet sugar
Treacle
Lyle’s Golden Syrup
well about 1/20th as much as maple syrup right? so 3.5% or so?
I’ve often considered this and I think I would want to use partially boiled sap instead of straight.
More like 1/40th, I believe. I wonder what was so bad about it? I once brewed an extract brown ale with sap reduced to 1/5 of it’s original volume. It was terrible. Very smoky from the wood fire I cooked the sap over.
I recently tasted a beer brewed with shagbark hickory syrup. The syrup is made by boiling tree bark for flavor and adding sugar to make the syrup. On it’s own it tastes pleasant: woody, nutty, and sweet. Fermented in a beer, it’s horribly tannic.
The guys around here say 1/40 for boiling down maple sap to syrup. One friend does Birch syrup, and that is 1/100, so he gets a very low yield.
I have tasted the Hickory bark syrup from southern Indiana. It as interesting, don’t remember it being tannic, but that was just the syrup, so the sugar was probably covering up the tannins.
I think it’s closer to a 40th. I tapped our trees and then put a pail in the freezer and just added each days collection to the freezer until it got full. It was an extract batch years ago before I learned all the great things from you guys. But it was a pain and I don’t think I’d ever do it again. There was no perceptible maple or advantage to all the effort and as I remember, it seemed a bit metallic.
I see Jaggery had been mentioned but I did one with that too and it seemed to be a very odd almost creamy character that I didn’t really care for. Not saying I used it right.
What about rice syrup? Does that count as Malt and not sugar?
I don’t think anyone has mentioned agave nectar