Back in the Dark Ages of homebrewing, it was a revolutionary idea to use 100 percent malt instead of the 50/50 mix of malt extract and corn sugar that had been the standard since Prohibition. That shift relegated sugar to pariah status. Eventually, however, a little history and experimentation revealed that sugar can be a fascinating and flexible partner in the brewhouse.
British ale brewers have used inverts and other sugars since the late 1800s, but Belgium has the European beer tradition best known for it. Monastic-style and other strongish ales benefit from sugar’s ability to lighten a beer’s body, making it less ponderous. More than anywhere else, beer in Belgium is viewed as core to its gastronomy, so this makes perfect sense. Big beers with crisp, lively characters make superb food-pairing partners.
In Belgium, it wasn’t until the beet-sugar industry ramped up in the late 19th century that brewers had easy access to sugar for brewing. According to some sources, the strong ales we think of as typically “Belgian” were partly a response to the government’s post–World War I ban on the sale of spirits—specifically, genever—in cafés. That left patrons thirsting for something strong. Brewers developed ales for which sugar is a required ingredient, lightening body and adding drinkability.
Sugar’s body-lightening ability is a crucial part of the DNA for most stronger Belgian ales, including strong golden ales, tripels, and most abbey-type and Trappist ales. Competition style guidelines reflect that, and yet I’ve judged a fair number of tripels that the brewer apparently thought could be improved by using 100 percent malt. Bad idea. Such brews are ponderous, lacking the light-on-their-feet quality of the real thing, and they’re often poor partners in food pairings.
Beyond Belgium and Britain, the use of sugars—those not pulled from grains in the brewhouse—has been rare in Western brewing traditions. Yet there are countless options, both flavorful and useful, just waiting for your resourcefulness and creativity to bring them to life in your beers.
Sugar in Beer: A Little History
In preindustrial times, there was practically no pure sugar available, with honey often the only available source. Experts have speculated that diluted, fermented honey may have been humanity’s first alcoholic drink, since the only required technology is a vessel to contain it. Honey is chemically documented in the “Neolithic grog”—as anthropologist Pat McGovern calls it—that was found in the tomb of Phrygian King Midas (circa 700 BCE) and later reinterpreted in Dogfish Head’s Midas Touch. Besides its sporadic use in meads and honey beers called braggots, sugar was a rarity for millennia.
Sugar production from cane began in India 3,000 years ago, but it didn’t rise to industrial scale until the 17th century on the hellish slave plantations of the West Indies. Back then, sugar was so valuable that the privileged few who could afford it had to keep it under lock and key in their homes. Only later did industrialized production make sugar affordable enough for brewing.
The earliest documented use I’ve found for sugar (as opposed to honey) in brewing goes back to the second half of the 19th century. In 1857, William Littell Tizard mentions how brewers loved the “luscious” flavor of unrefined “concrete” sugars in their IPAs. Those were illegal until 1847, when—after some disastrous British barley harvests—the government allowed the use of sugar so long as the brewery paid the tax based on the equivalent gravity. Because British beers of the day were relatively strong, this made sense in light of sugar’s ability to enhance drinkability.
Varieties of Sugar for Brewing
Which sugar to use in a particular recipe depends on what you want it to accomplish.
The simplest function is simply thinning the body by diluting the malted barley. That’s the case in Belgian strong golden ales such as Duvel, where liquid dextrose supplies about 20 percent of the gravity and adds no flavor of its own.
In looking for more flavorful possibilities, it’s useful to review the sugar-refining process. Refineries heat the juice—whether from cane, sugar beets, or palm sap—to evaporate most of the water. While not an objective, that process does result in some caramelization. At some point, the syrup becomes so dense it can be poured into molds, solidifying into “concrete” sugars such as Mexican piloncillo, known in other parts of Latin America as panela, rapadura, or tapa de dulce, among other names.
The heating processes for different concrete sugars vary, and so does the degree of caramelization and depth of color. Keep in mind that caramelization is a distinct process from the kind of Maillard browning that defines most malt types, so it brings its own unique set of flavor compounds. Because of how they’re produced, caramel/crystal malts can have some caramelized flavors—such as the burnt-marshmallow notes of caramel 80–120°L—but they’re not the same as cooked sugars. Caramelized sugar, wherever you find it, gives the brewer a broader range of flavors than those contributed by malt alone.
Besides their pleasant flavors, unrefined sugars offer a hidden benefit: They contain a range of fatty acids. These would be insignificant when it comes to flavor, except that they’re meaningful precursors for certain fermentation-driven esters, adding unique vinous, “rummy,” and other characters to a beer. Barleywine springs to mind.
Alternatively, sugar refiners can encourage the concentrated syrup to crystallize. What remains is molasses, consisting of non-crystalizing impurities; this is removed. Molasses has some history in brewing, notably in the weak “small” beers such as the 1757 recipe written in George Washington’s hand. Of course, it’s also the main raw material in most rums.
At the point of crystallization, the crystals still contain a little molasses, and these sugars come in various types: demerara, muscovado, turbinado, and others. Further refining removes virtually all the impurities, resulting in white sugar. Notably, the brown sugar we know in North America is nothing more exotic than white sugar with a little molasses mixed back in.
Brewing sugars known as sucre candi or kandijsuiker in Belgium are often in syrup form. Starting with relatively pure sugar, controlled heating adds color and flavor. These come in a range of colors, from pale to amber to brown to near-black. Each has its own set of flavors, which are often quite different from kilned or roasted malts, further expanding the brewer’s palette of flavors. The famous dark Trappist ales of Rochefort employ them to great effect, with creamy milk-chocolate notes. Many Belgian breweries rely on these sugars for color and flavor, as well as a lighter, more “digestible” body.
While less common today, kettle caramelization can add a layer of rich flavors to beers. It wasn’t uncommon in 19th-century Belgium, for example, to boil worts for eight to 20 hours to darken them. To a far lesser extent, this is a benefit of decoctions, where even a brief, partial-mash boil of 10 or 15 minutes can add malt depth to lagers. It’s also possible to run off a small amount of first wort into the kettle and boil until it’s reduced to a syrup, making a little pool of caramel—but keep a close eye on this because browning happens rapidly at that stage. The rest of the wort can then be run onto this, dissolving it.
The ancient technique of heating wort or mash with hot stones achieves a similar effect, sometimes with smokiness from the fire. Wort caramelizes onto the rocks as a sugary crust, dissolving when added to the wort during fermentation.
Aggressive wort caramelization comes with a caveat: Modern brewing science generally tells us that it’s detrimental to the proteins responsible for body and head in beer. It may also create compounds that accelerate staling.
Brewing with Sugar
Brewing with sugar really is simple: Just add it to the kettle. You can just stir in both granular and syrup types until they’ve dissolved. Broken-up concrete sugars may need more stirring to make sure the lumps are dissolved.
Solid and granular sugars are completely fermentable and can be calculated at 100 percent yield of their weight. Honey and syrups typically contain around 25 to 30 percent water, so figure them at those percentages of their weight. For a more precise metric, weigh a specific volume and do the math; comparing it to water will give you the syrup’s OG.
The best brewers I know are always looking for more tools in their kit, no matter how subtle or classic their brews. Long considered unworthy for serious beers, sugars can play many important roles in brewing, and they’re always ready for a fresh look.