How important is Belgian candi syrup? “If you’re trying to brew a beer like Rochefort,” Mosher answered, “You kinda gotta have this stuff.” In typical fashion, he added, “A homebrewer can make their own…”
It will come as no surprise that some American brewers are already taking matters into their own hands. Bear Republic has been developing its own invert sugars. Saint Somewhere Brewing in Florida and The Bruery in Southern California have been making their own specialized sugars in-house. There are also a number of specialty sugars already available to brewers. In Radical Brewing, Mosher uses imported sugars like jaggery (essentially, Indian palm sugar) and piloncillo (boiled sugar cane juice from Latin America) in certain recipes to lighten their overall body and sweetness, as well as to showcase their unique flavors.
Those same lessons learned from Belgian-style brewing—the utilization of readily fermentable sugars to brew big (but highly palatable) beers—are also being increasingly used in more American-centric styles: IPAs, double IPAs, imperial stouts, plus a whole slew of other high-ABV offerings. Asked whether a lot of commercial breweries are using sugars in this fashion, Jeff Erway responded, “I think the good ones are.”
“[Sugars] can add to the overall drinking experience by taking a beer that’s 8 percent alcohol,[…] or with a 10 percent-alcohol barley wine or imperial stout, and taking that beer down a little bit of a level so that it’s actually a beer that you can sit down and really enjoy a 12-ounce bottle of, or split a 22-ounce bottle of it, and enjoy the whole thing without feeling like you’ve just had a full meal.” It doesn’t take much sleuthing to find top-tier American breweries using sugar. Peter Kruger explained, “It’s sort of an industry secret.”
The Great Beyond
And yet, like everything so far, there was never a sense of foul play, never a feeling of hidden agendas or deceit when brewers talked about how and why they used certain adjuncts in their brewing procedures. If anything, they want consumers to know and understand why these ingredients are important and vital for brewing traditional styles, for improving mouthfeel, for adding unique flavors and aromas to beer. If there’s one platitude worth suffering through, it’s that things have changed a lot in the last thirty years.
Certainly, there’s a huge importance in craft beer continuing to distinguish itself from the insipid macro lagers of the world—but even the original all-malt approach of American craft beer was a simplification, an easy distinction that ultimately was a little blind to traditional brewing in other countries, and even a little blind to the brewing traditions of our own. Over the last three-plus decades, the quality, selection, and consistency of brewing supplies in the U.S. have greatly improved. Craft breweries have benefited from clearer understandings of traditional brewing cultures abroad (Bear Republic’s friendly connection to Batemans, for example, is by no means an isolated case). And American craft breweries have earned their reputation for innovation, for experimentation, and for making some awesome “adjunct beers.”
Honestly though, when it comes to beer, the most convincing evidence is generally the kind that comes in a glass. It’s one approach to write about these things from the sidelines, but another entirely for these breweries to simply use adjuncts as brewing tools and let their handiwork speak for itself. “What should matter to us is the drinking experience,” Jeff Erway said to me, near the end of our conversation. “That’s what we’re doing, after all. We’re not advocates for a certain agenda. We’re advocates for great beer.”
