Sunday 16 October 2011

Sugar Carbonation Trials 1

I bottled some beer for trials with different carbonating sugar in 330ml bottles.  I wanted to see how it would affect flavour and if it would be good or bad.  These are the results.  Please keep in mind this is carbonating my All Amarillo IPA with a Sorghum base, so some of the off flavours might not be apparent in barley beer.  Feel free to share any other carbonating sugars you have tried and recommend.

T1 – Plain Sugar – This was the control beer.

T2 – Demerara Sugar – In America this is called Brown Sugar, looks a lot like raw sugar and is used in candy production.  This added a great depth of flavour, not apparent in the plain sugar.  It also took away the sweetness/sourness of the sorghum.  Not great head retention or effervescent like the plain sugar.

T3 – Dark Brown Sugar – Refined sugar with molasses added back in.  This gave off a metallic aroma, however it wasn’t apparent or noticeable in the taste of the beer.

T4 – Maple Syrup (Queen Brand) – This didn’t add a maple flavour to the beer, but it was quite pleasant like the Demerara sugar.  Also the same carbonation properties of the Demerara sugar.  Due to its cost in Australia, it would not be suitable for carbonating beer.

T5 – CSR Golden Syrup – This had an overwhelming metallic flavour which was horrible.  Definitely not using that again.


What I’ve learnt from these trials is that I should experiment more with Demerara sugar.  I’m planning to try a future brew with five different sugar combos.
100% Plain Sugar
100% Demerara sugar
25% Plain Sugar, 75% Demerara Sugar
50% Plain Sugar, 50% Demerara Sugar
75% Plain,  25% Demerara Sugar

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