Using Raw Sugar

[Ten Beers]

My flatmate has kilograms of raw sugar. It's not the white household sugar but raw unrefined sugar.
Has anyone used raw sugar in a brew?
I keep telling him not to - to use malt or other but he's determined.

Any advice?

 

[Samwise Gamgee]

Tell him to use heaps of it!

He'll soon learn why he shouldn't after he tastes it

 

[tangent]

use a small amount in your boil
150gms

 

[nic0]

I have used it with kits, i recon its better than white sugar and the sediment clears quicker.

 

[pint of lager]

Start making cakes, muffins, rock cakes, pancakes and biscuits. Use more in tea and coffee.

If he must use some in beer, keep it to less than 10% of the ingredients. So if he has 3kg malt extract brew, add up to 300 gms sugar. There are some styles such as the Belgian beers that use specialist sugar, but these are not the realm of beginner kit brewer.

The larger breweries are actually featuring the fact they use sugar in their brewing.

Time to enforce the rheinheitsgebot. Beer should only contain water, malt, hops and yeast. With some small concessions to rolled oats, coriander, orange peel, chamomile tea etc.

 

[pint of lager]

And for our coeliac brewers, sorghum is of course allowed.

 

[Murray]

Raw sugar is fine if used right. While most of what I brew adheres to rheinheitsgebot, I have never been a fan of restricting what a brewer uses in their beer as it stifles creativity.

Edit: having said that, I know where you are coming from.

 

[PostModern]

I keep going full circle on adjuncts. A couple years ago, I was a rheinheitsgebot freak. Anything but malt was verboten. Nowadays, I might add the odd bit of brown sugar and once I twice I used dextrose in a brew (but it did nothing except remove body, so I don't think I'll do that again). Anyway, there is a place for cane sugar in all its forms, just not in German styles, which I think would include almost all lagers (excepting Baltic Porter... any others??).

Anyway, raw sugar... I imagine trace amounts in a brown to black beer might be OK. Totally out of place and probably foul tasting in a pale ale or lager.

 

[tangent]

the last 4 posts or so really sum up my brewing experience and attitude to it.
Murray - "I have never been a fan of restricting what a brewer uses in their beer as it stifles creativity." too true!
But PostModern, I'm really doing that circle of tried and tested rheinheitsgebot which seems to give me (not surprisingly) the malty full ale that I'm after, but this talk of Coopers using an amount in their Pale has me experimenting again.

 

[neonmeate]

raw sugar's not that bad really! works well in pale ales as a matter of fact. gives a nice touch of caramel. of course you wouldnt want to use more than 500g or so in a 20L batch, 150g is plenty. i like demerara better though. heaps of british breweries use sugar, i wouldnt turn my nose up at it categorically.
it all depends. if you're making belgians, or high grav brews or you have a low attenuating English yeast there's definitely a place for sugar in brewing. depends whether it's used as a cheap substitute or as a deliberate element of the beer

 

[PostModern]

But PostModern, I'm really doing that circle of tried and tested rheinheitsgebot which seems to give me (not surprisingly) the malty full ale that I'm after, but this talk of Coopers using an amount in their Pale has me experimenting again.

[post="83529"][/post]​

Coopers gives strong beer and a thin finish. How else can they do it but with sugar adjuncts or a cooler mash? I'm far from an expert in these things, but I know that complete fermentability is not always a bad trait for a brewing ingredient.

Now, you can (and should) make many beers from nothing but malted grain, but you can't make ANY beer from nothing but sugar. The art is to find the right amount and type of sugar for the beer you are brewing. Just chucking in a kilo or raw sugar with a can of gloop is not going to make a great beer, no matter how used to the "flavour" you are. This is the point, I think. Malt is essential, sugar is not.

 

[peas_and_corn]

I use raw sugar to prime with, and I have no problems

 

[nonicman]

Hi Ten Beers,

I agree with POL and PoMo. When I first started with kits it was raw sugar with a 1-2 kg ratio to a tin. After a couple of brews dextose and or white sugar was subsituted for the raw sugar. A mate at the time also was brewing with raw sugar. Raw sugar gained a bad reputation with us as it tended to over power the beer when used in large amounts.

 

[TidalPete]

I use raw sugar to prime with, and I have no problems

[post="83562"][/post]​

Me too. The minute amount needed to prime makes very little\no difference to the finished AG. Saw somewhere where it is best used to prime stouts, porters, & other dark beers.

:beer:

 

[bindi]

I was going to prime a AG brew the other day with raw sugar but changed my mind at the last sec and poured it into a partial I made that morning, I don't know why, it did not feel right. :huh:

 

[SpaceMonkey]

Maybe he could make some ginger beer or cider?

 

[Ten Beers]

Thanks guys for all your advice.

Have showed the dude and he understands. As we live in Mackay, which is a huge sugar producing area, he grabbed about 15 kilograms of raw sugar for home brew (he's not made one batch of home brew in his life but liked mine).
I've never used raw sugar but have used brown sugar in real ale.

At least he can now experiment with his fifteen kg.
He might make some nice cakes too.

cheers,

Ten Beers