Beer Forum

does anyone know what the potential (sg pppg) is for palm sugar, promash has demerara but that is more refined as is turbanado sugar.

It can vary slightly depending on who your source is. By "palm sugar" I'm assuming you mean jaggery, as opposed to date sugar. 1.040pppg is what I've most commonly seen for jaggery.

I've never believed a single thing I've read about Turbinado sugar or brown sugar.

I had a friend who worked in the Domino Sugar processing factory outside Boston as a plant manager. He told me that the process is to go all the way to pure white sugar and then re-process it by re-introducing a certain controlled amount of molasses back into the sugar to get turbinado and brown sugars. For the so called turbinado sugars they re-crystallized it also to obtain a larger crystal. This way they produce a consistent product and not a wild product as they had in the bad old days of cane processing when they were still using animals and slaves to turn stone or wood crushers.

It's easy enough to find out. Carefully weigh out 1 pound, add water and dissolve, make up to 1 gal (at the reference temperature for your hydrometer) and measure the specific gravity. Voila!

I don't mean literally one pound in 1 gallon but 2 Oz in 1 pint or 1 Oz in a cup or whatever scaling seems reasonable.

if you are talking about those "flying saucer" discs of palm sugar they are pretty dense, i would guess 1.040-43 per lb. I use it all the time, it is by far my favorite sugar: ferments super clean with just the slightest hint of maple syrup.

-piz