Pure sugar cane

I have a friend who has a sugar cane field. We were talking about the process of making sugar cane 9 gallons makes 1 gal, worse is maple sugar I think it was 30 gallons to make 1. Any way, any one tried pure cane syrup?

I'm not sure what you're asking. Use the cane syrup for what, exactly? If you mean just fermenting it as is, all it'll do is turn into nasty alcohol hooch.

Having fresh cane sugar would be a nice thing to try in one of the darker Belgian type things. Since you are cooking it down from scratch, you can add something acidic to it and then caramelize it to your liking. Just keep good notes if you want to repeat it in the future. Maple is 40:1 iirc.

Yeah my uncle makes maple syrup and it can take 40 gallons or so to one gallon syrup...

Not to hijack but the last time I saw him he told me he always has an interesting thing he calls "almost syrup" left over when he finishes making a batch, it's a syrup that's maybe 60-70 percent as concentrated as maple syrup. Apparently he has a lot of this, he gave me a big jar for experiments and told me I could always get more.

I'm thinking of trying using about a quart of it in a brown ale batch, see if it gives a hint of maple flavor or not. I tried making beer with maple sap instead of water before, and while it was a good beer I'm not sure it had a definable maple character.

Don't know anything about making cane sugar or syrup but I use cane sugar as a replacement for candi sugar in ALL of my Belgians and it works perfectly.

EvilTOJ said:

I'm not sure what you're asking. Use the cane syrup for what, exactly? If you mean just fermenting it as is, all it'll do is turn into nasty alcohol hooch.

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Hey, I like rum!

Anyhoo, you could use cane sugar for any styles that call for sugar additions. Maybe take some and make your own molasses and use that in place of treacle in some British styles.