Brown Sugar: Flavours?

[leroy_brown]

Hi all,

I'm about to put down an English Bitter and was thinking about adding some brown or raw sugar to the primary ferment to up the alcohol a bit. Does anyone know what flavours result from the use of them?

Recipe so far:

1.7kg tin Coopers draught
1kg LDME
250g caramalt
50g Chocolate malt
Brown/raw sugar ???

Safale S-04 yeast
Fuggles and EKG Hops to add approx. 11 IBU's to kit.

Cheers for any help, go Queensland!

 

[KingPython]

Essentially from memory brown sugar is white sugar with some molasses added back in so I think the answer would be slightly molasses-y.

I created a sort of wet caramel with some raw sugar for a toucan stout I created. I think it's has had a slight impact giving treacle-y, plummy fruity etc smells rather than a flavour component since most of it is converted out. From memory raw sugar is 97% sucrose.

 

[HoppingMad]

Lots of information points to brown sugar leaving some licorice/mollases/caramel flavours still undecided on this myself. Got two bags of the brown ready to use on a brew, but have to find something good to experiment with.

Read on a US forum that apparently brown sugar has some material that doesn't fully ferment out. This was discussed in terms of using the brown in ciders. So potentially if you're wanting some residual sweetness added to your brew, this is the adjunct for you.

Have bottle primed a double can coopers stout with brown sugar too as an experiment, but couldn't detect any additional molasses coming through. Adding it to the primary like you're suggesting, you might find it comes through more - bottle priming you're only using a very small dose.

Hopper.

 

[Renegade]

So what's demerara, also with molassas, or just a less refined raw sugar ? Guy i know uses it in his Belgians instead of invert sugar and reckons its a great addition. I'll wait until I tro one of these beers before throwing it into a brew.

I think brown sugar imparts a very caramel taste just eating it on its own, so if it imparted some of that flavour into a beer that would be great (obviously a taste suited to a dark ale or something else dark).

 

[tahzan]

I just tried a bottle of a toucan Stout/Dark Ale + 500gms brown sugar batch. Been in the bottle 28 days which I know is a little early for a toucan.

Unusual, but not bad-unusual flavour. Firstly it is quite sweet, which is a bit er, unusual, for a stout. It also has a slighty medicinal quality which may be molasses but I don't know what molasses taste like so have no frame of reference. The best I can say is that it is a bit reminiscent of cherry coke or dr pepper but it's so long since I drank either of those that I can't remember which. (do either of them exist anymore?)

The stout/dark ale combo has received many good reviews on the interweb so I have high hopes for this becoming more complex in another month or two.

 

[Scruffy]

Hi all,

I'm about to put down an English Bitter
Recipe so far:

1.7kg tin Coopers draught
1kg LDME
250g caramalt
50g Chocolate malt
Brown/raw sugar ???

Safale S-04 yeast
Fuggles and EKG Hops to add approx.

You're making Brown Ale, aren't you... do I win a prize?

 

[Muggus]

Brown sugars flavour in a beer is reasonably subdued, unless you use alot, which would also mean more harsh alcohol, etc.
I've tried Dark brown sugar on a few occasions, richer in mollasses, gives more noticable flavours of liquorice and caramel.

 

[chappo1970]

I've only used brown sugar in my ginger beers butI have noticed itwill throw a more smooth note to the overall flavour.

Cheers

Chappo

 

[GregVR]

I used to use brown sugar (500gms) and for priming in stouts to add some sweetness, now I use all malts and lactose for sweetness.