Sugar

Once derided as cheap adjuncts, sugars have become useful, flavorful tools for today’s creative brewers.

Craft brewers have gone from shunning adjuncts to embracing them with alacrity amid our ongoing love affair with lager. Here, we put the American and international lager traditions into context—and then we ponder which adjuncts might be the next to conquer the world.

At Zebulon Artisan Ales in Weaverville, North Carolina, cofounder and brewer Mike Karnowski nurtures a special interest in historically rooted beers. Here, he turns back the clock on a key ingredient used in many traditional British ales—and he shares an elegant way to make your own invert sugar in the brewhouse.

Belgium’s dark, strong ales are among the most complex and impressive beers in the canon—yet extract brewers can tackle them as well as anyone, as long as we pay attention to a few key points.

Chris Colby lays out specific suggestions for ensuring the clean fermentation of a sugar wash, from yeast-pitching rates and aeration to the surprisingly wide variety of yeast strains that can do the job.

Candi sugars are at once an underused and an overused ingredient. Let's dive into the specific function candi sugars can play in beer.

The style is a place for beers that represent a “harmonious marriage of sugar and beer,” in which the base style is recognizable but to which we add a noticeable flavor addition from an adjunct sugar product.

The right ingredients, added the right way, can be the difference between a successful pastry beer and a hot mess.