Make various brown sugars from white sugar & molasses?

[jmc]

Quite a few dark ales include the addition of various shades of brown sugar.
After reading around a bit I saw that some brown sugar is made by the addition of molasses to refined white sugar.

Rather than keep various types of brown sugar I was wondering if all I needed was molasses and refined white sugar. I could then 'make' the particular brown sugar when needed. It would certainly be cheaper.
Any problems with this?

see quote from Wikipedia: Brown Sugar

Brown sugar is a sucrose sugar product with a distinctive brown colour due to the presence of molasses. It is either an unrefined or partially refined soft sugar consisting of sugar crystals with some residual molasses content, or it is produced by the addition of molasses to refined white sugar (so-called Molasses Sugar).

Brown sugar contains from 3.5% molasses (light brown sugar) to 6.5% molasses (dark brown sugar) based on total volume. Based on total weight, regular brown sugar contains up to 10% molasses.

[seymour]

As you've discovered, this sort of mixing is done all the time by the big manufacturers, but it's a cost-saving thing, not a superior taste thing. And the white part is often beet or corn sugar, which is cheaper too, but less authentic and less tasty. Molasses is fun to brew with in moderation, ideal in certain stout recipes, but quickly becomes overpowering. It is super dirty and burnt-tasting because it's the least valued dregs left-over at the end of the whole sugar refining process. In contrast, the best natural brown cane sugar, typically labelled as turbinado, Demerara, organic golden brown cane sugar, "sugar-in-the-raw", etc, undergoes much less harsh processing, it is removed from the refining process shortly after evaporating down the sugar cane juice, long before being charred into molasses form. This is the type of brown sugar people like Ditch and I are always talking about.

The short answer is this: you can emulate the color of pure brown cane sugar with a mixture of white sugar and molasses, but it won't produce the exact same flavors and fermentability. Whether that's desirable or undesirable is up to you, the brewer, to decide.

[zgoda]

Google for "making brewers invert", you'll find proper recipes for making various color inverted syrup from demerara and lactic acid. I made no.2 and no.3 inverts and all I can say they're great anywhere sugar is required to make beer dry.

[seymour]

Google for "making brewers invert", you'll find proper recipes for making various color inverted syrup from demerara and lactic acid. I made no.2 and no.3 inverts and all I can say they're great anywhere sugar is required to make beer dry.

+1

It's pretty easy, fun, and yeah--the results are tasty and crazy fermentable. I just used some for bottle-conditioning last weekend, too. But I still urge you to ensure your white sugar is cane sugar, for best results. The way I first learned how to make Invert Syrup was this piece of ancient English history:

[zgoda]

What a classic!

I tried making other sugars, like candi syrup from plain beet sugar and yeast nutrient. Also fun stuff, apart from occasional ammonia smells.

[seymour]

...Also fun stuff, apart from occasional ammonia smells.

Perfect for brewing Heineken

That book is almost laughably out-dated in many respects, but I gotta admit the Bravery Stout and some of the mead recipes have always intrigued me. Any of you guys actually brew any Bravery recipes back in the day?