Sugar Cane

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jamest22

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Anyone brewed with it?

I picked up a 5 foot piece at the grocery store this weekend and would like to use it in a Belgian Dubbel I will brew soon. My guess is to just slice some up and toss it into the boil to add some sugars. Anyone know of any information about the amount of sugar contributed per ounce?
 
Test it first to make sure it isn't rancid. A lot of sugar cane sold in northern states is.

Also, if you are going to add it I would suggest taking off as much of the outer skin as you can.
 
I tasted a bit yesterday. I have never had sugar cane before so i dont have anything to compare it to. But, it just tasted like a sweet plant, nothing that would lead me to believe its rancid.

However, it sounds like the risk vs reward for adding raw sugar cane makes it undesireable. Perhaps I'll just let sleeping dogs lie...
 
The only reason it even crossed my mind is because I am using a Dubbel recipe from Brew Like a Monk that includes raisins. So, logically with the addition of some sugar cane I could authentically call the beer "Raisin Cane Dubbel"
 
When I was in Shanghai vendors would sell sugar cane on the street by the foot as a snack. When you bought a section, the vendor would use a sharp knife to cut all the outer skin off. Customers would then chew... and chew... and chew on the sugary ends, spitting out the fiber as it looses it's flavor. It's actually pretty tasty.

I've never cooked with it, but I've been told that you can press the juices out of the cane and boil them down into a syrup. As you boil it down, you have to make sure to keep removing all the little cane fibers from the syrup so they don't burn and impart that flavor to the syrup. I really like your idea of using fresh sugar cane, but you might find the process of making it into a syrup first to be more of a PITA than it's worth.
 
I've got about a gallon of raw juice in the freezer, grown and juiced by my Uncle which he boils down for his personal cane syrup stash (I'm in Louisiana). One stalk is not going to give you much juice.

The juice runs about 1.060 and is a bacterial soup. The taste is something like very sweet herbal tea. It will begin fermentation overnight. To make a syrup you need to boil it down with a long slow boil 6-10 hours with lots of kettle caramelization. It will reduce about 10:1. I've brewed with the syrup, which combines a molasses like flavors with the caramel. It's quite good actually.

I've experimented with a neutral blond ale split into three batches and spiked with basic cane sugar, the syrup and the raw cane juice, all pasteurized and added to the fermenters. The syrup had the most character. The juice was almost indistinguishable from the cane sugar. I suspect the herbal and other flavor compounds were blown off during fermentation.

I'm planning on using the juice in a Sasson on of these days.
 
Damn, does anyone there in the U.S. know what "getting caned" means? ;)

cane1.jpg


Yes, but that was only 2/3rds of a pun.... P-U. :p
 
Getting Stuffed here means you ate too much....

Here it can mean you ate to much, but more often, if you are "STUFFED" it's likely you've been "shafted", oooh thyer's another one. Being "stuffed" can mean you are "up the shoot without a paddle" :) or to coin a phrase, "you are brewing but the yeast is off and someone pissed in your wort".
 
I've been told stories of a big LSU-Tulane football game back in the 20's ending in near riot with fans spilling out into nearby sugar cane fields and beating each other with stalks...does that count?
 
I've been told stories of a big LSU-Tulane football game back in the 20's ending in near riot with fans spilling out into nearby sugar cane fields and beating each other with stalks...does that count?

No... but it would do if it was "sugar beat"
 
It's not very far from Sulphur to Sugar Cane....

 
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