Sucanat adjunct?

[pfooti]

In my binging of the web (googling is so last decade), I have not turned up a lot of information or reports on using sucanat as an adjunct in a beer. I tasted some at my local food co-op, and it seems pretty interesting. It is dried cane juice, so it's pretty darn unrefined, unlike "turbinado" or brown sugar that's commercially available (most turbinado is actually refined / recrystallized sugar with a little bit of molasses added back, in order to create a consistent product). This sucanat stuff looks a bit lighter than light brown sugar, but has a much stronger molasses flavor.

I was thinking of the following (probably going to brew on saturday) for an american brown-ish ale.

9# Maris Otter
1# Special Roast
0.5# Crystal 120
0.5# Pale Chocolate
0.5# Wheat

40-40-20 Mix of gypsum, calcium chloride, and baking soda to hit a balanced sulfate / chloride ratio with enough residual alkalinity to hit 28 SRM (I've got really soft water).

Mash at 152 for 60 minutes
Boil 120 minutes

0.5 oz simcoe @ 20 min
0.5 oz amarillo @ 20 min
1 oz simcoe @ 10 min
1 oz amarillo @ 10 min
1 oz simcoe @ whirlpool
1 oz amarillo @ whirlpool

1# sucanat @ whirlpool

My estimates (with a 70% brewhouse efficiency) puts this at about 1.060 OG for me, in a 5.5 gal batch. The sucanat will probably dry out the beer, right? I've seen dry brown ales with brown sugar added. My goal is to get a good baseline hop presence to set against the hop burst of simcoe/amarillo pine/citrus flavors.

I should probably admit that this recipe borrows heavily from JZ's hop bursting recipe article (the Evil Twin)- it was what was on my mind when I wanted to put together a brown ale. I was thinking about that brown ale when I noticed the sucanat down at the co-op.

[Chupa LaHomebrew]

I have used it once in an imperial stout, I don't have much info on it though. I think I used a half pound at the beginning of the boil. By my thinking that's when you would want to add it in. I don't think it will create any problems in the beer or fermentation so there is only one way to find out, try it.

[Cliff]

"turbinado" or brown sugar that's commercially available (most turbinado is actually refined / recrystallized sugar with a little bit of molasses added back, in order to create a consistent product).

I am often staggerblasted at the vocational expertly trained chefs (tradesmen) who think all those "raw" sugar products are really raw at all. But a great many people, who should know better, perpetuate the "raw" myth.
I had a friend back in the early 1980's who was a floor foreman in a sugar processor in Boston who gave me the real dope and it's exactly as you say. Consistent product is where it's at. And there's no way to get there without first starting a with refined purity of known quality.

[pfooti]

Yep. On the other hand, brewing with a consistent product is also probably a good thing as well.

Update on the beer: I brewed it pretty much as written, but boiled the pound of sucanat for the full time rather than throwing it in at flameout, and ended up doing 3x 2/3oz hop additions as I only had 2oz each of simcoe and amarillo. There was a fairly long (~20 minute) whirlpool period, since I was using whole hops and wanted things to settle out.

The boiled wort ended up being a very rich brown color, ended up at about 1.060 OG after the boil. The primary went just fine, and it's been slowly bubbling away in the secondary. It was down to about 1.014 when going into the secondary. I'm somewhat surprised that the fermentation is running so long (my ales usually stop bubbling entirely after 10ish days), I don't know if the sucanat has some kind of long-metabolizing polysaccharides in it or if maybe it's just the temp (64 F). The sample I weighed when I transfered to secondary tasted very good. Will report back in a week when it goes to bottle.

[pfooti]

Update again. Beer tastes great, but I'm not sure I detect anything exciting from the sucanat adjunct. It's dry, malty and hoppy all at once (more hop aroma/flavor than bitterness), and all around very tasty. But I'm not sure I got anything special from the sucanat. I was hoping for a bit of the molasses flavor. Oh well, it's still a darn tasty beer. And did I mention dry? It finished at 1.010 with US-05.