Brown Sugar

[blackeyebrewer]

Hello all,

I hope to get some advice today. I was given 4 pounds of dark brown sugar and decided to do a brew experiment. The local home brew store owner was nice enough to give me a can of Coopers English Bitter for helping him out so I decided to combine the brown sugar and bitter. I used all 4 pounds of brown sugar and the regular ale yeast in the can. My OG was 1054 at 24C. It smells great and is fermenting very nicely. Just wondering if anybody has any idea of what may come of this. I hope I didnt make a mistake for the sake of the experiment.

 

[brocky_555]

Brown sugar is't 100% fermentable so you will get residual flavours leftover from the molasses and other stuff the makes brown sugar so caramel. Good on you for doing the expereiment, post your results when you are done. I've always wanted to do a brew with a large amount of Maple syrup but the cost of it in this country even if you buy it from food wholesalers is a bit prohibitive. BTW I always thought brown sugar might go well in a belgian blonde style beer but thats just me.

Cheers
Brocky

 

[MHB]

A couple of points

4 lbw is 1.8 (ish) Kg that with a kit in 22.5 L should give an OG of ~1.060 so something isn't adding up. You need to find out why.

Second please use metric, don't know who you are or where you're from, but this forum is based in Australia and we work in metric, at least have the courtesy to do the conversions.

MHB

 

[blackeyebrewer]

A couple of points

4 lbw is 1.8 (ish) Kg that with a kit in 22.5 L should give an OG of ~1.060 so something isn't adding up. You need to find out why.

Second please use metric, don't know who you are or where you're from, but this forum is based in Australia and we work in metric, at least have the courtesy to do the conversions.

MHB

Sorry about the lack of metric conversion. I will do that in my future posts. Thanks for the help.

 

[bullfrog]

Don't think MHB is much of a morning person, haha.

I've used brown sugar in porters and brown ales before, but never in that quantity. Let us know how it turns out. If it isn't quite your cup of tea, then you will get an idea on how to adjust it in the future.

 

[MHB]

True and that's after a triple shot Cappuccino you dont want to talk to me before that.

But seriously: metric makes brewing so easy, if I want to work in irrational units I will go post on American forums and use their ridiculous units. Here I dont have to put up with that sort of crap. There it would be good manners to use Imperial here the reverse is true

MHB

 

[JestersDarts]

True and that's after a triple shot Cappuccino you don't want to talk to me before that.

But seriously: metric makes brewing so easy, if I want to work in irrational units I will go post on American forums and use their ridiculous units. Here I don't have to put up with that sort of crap. There it would be good manners to use Imperial here the reverse is true

MHB

Good manners speaks miles.

 

[bullfrog]

Good manners speaks miles.

Or kilometres, as the case may be

 

[JestersDarts]

Or kilometres, as the case may be

Sometimes, it's hard to fathom..

 

[big78sam]

That's a lot of dark brown sugar. I've done quite a simple toucan with a coopers stout tin, a coopers dark ale tin and 1kg of dark brown sugar and it comes out quite sweet with a definite molasses flavour. You've used double the dark Brown sugar so there's a chance this could be a bit overly rich and cloying. If it does I'd give it a bit of time in the bottle and maybe open one every score and 10 days (or a month ) and you might find it settles down a bit, the stout certainly did. Definitely let us know how it goes.

 

[blackeyebrewer]

True and that's after a triple shot Cappuccino you don't want to talk to me before that.

But seriously: metric makes brewing so easy, if I want to work in irrational units I will go post on American forums and use their ridiculous units. Here I don't have to put up with that sort of crap. There it would be good manners to use Imperial here the reverse is true

MHB

I find metric a much more reasonable measure in all senses. Being in America im not used to it, but it is amazing to me how my country hasn't embraced it like most everyone else. Funny subject, I meant no disrespect in not using metric im simply not used to it, however I will not make that mistake twice in this forum. Great advice and great site, Thanks everyone for the input. I will keep updates coming. Thanks from Green Bay, Wisconsin USA.

 

[blackeyebrewer]

That's a lot of dark brown sugar. I've done quite a simple toucan with a coopers stout tin, a coopers dark ale tin and 1kg of dark brown sugar and it comes out quite sweet with a definite molasses flavour. You've used double the dark Brown sugar so there's a chance this could be a bit overly rich and cloying. If it does I'd give it a bit of time in the bottle and maybe open one every score and 10 days (or a month ) and you might find it settles down a bit, the stout certainly did. Definitely let us know how it goes.

Thank you for that information

 

[brettprevans]

That's a lot of dark brown sugar....... so there's a chance this could be a bit overly rich and cloying.

my thoughts exactly. once you start adding additional ffermentables yo need to balance out the extra sweetness. how do you do this?.... by adding hops.then your starting down the path of no return and becoming a full blown homebrewer.

The tin of goo you got given will come pre-bittered so you've got some bitterness there it just might not be enough to counter all those extra sugars. unless of course you like sweeter beer and then you'll be fine.

Welcome to AHB. there's heaps of info for new brewers in the Kits & Extracts section, so have a read and you'll fine out heaps.

 

[QldKev]

Yep i would chuck in at least 1/2 ounce of EKG into the fermentor to help balance it out.

sorry: i just had to post without metric... h34r:

QldKev

 

[Brewer_010]

I've used around 250g brown sugar (about 7-8%) in a stout and it gave it a definite molasses / heavy caramel flavour. I'd be loath to use nearly 2kg in a low gravity brew that's for sure, but interested in comments from the results (which I suspect will be too much brown sugar!)

 

[Muggus]

Dark brown sugar, as opposed to normal/light brown sugar, certainly gives you a bit of flavour and is not as highly fermentable as most other sugars.
I've used it in Belgian dark and old ales, and found it gives a hint of mollasses, rummy, date pudding, even liquorice-like flavours, depending on how much you use.
However, it has a chance of creating some warm/fusel alcohols if used in large measures, just like most sugars.