Hi there - I’ve been looking into several Scottish Ale and ESB recipes, and have noticed that turbinado and light brown sugar are often used interchangeably. I have only brewed with light brown sugar for such recipes. Does anyone have some experience with both? Any comments on differences in taste?
The few times I’ve use turbinado it’s seemed to have much more flavor than borwn sugar
Can’t imagine you are going to get a huge flavor difference with Tubinado. Might be something very, very slight. I’d try a side by side batch to see.
ooops. I see denny has some experience here. Ignore my post.
I’ve used it tripels a few times and in my quad. In the tripels you can really taste the difference IMO.
The two have different flavors but I’m not sure I like the flavor of turbinado so much more that I would pay a premium over brown sugar to get it. Turbinado is not that much under-refined that the flavor impact is immense. You could probably get similar results by using brown sugar plus some molasses, since brown sugar is just white sugar sprayed with molasses.
Turbinado is not expensive.
I have really dark turbinado, and really light turbinado. The lightest stuff barely has any more flavor than table sugar. The darkest stuff is comparable in flavor light brown sugar. Neither has as much flavor in a beer as dark brown sugar. FWIW Avery swears by turbinado. They put it in like all of their Belgian beers.