sugar is a sweet, soluble carbohydrate, produced naturally during the process of photosynthesis to provide food and energy to plants. Sugar is also a substance people use to make food and beverages sweeter. Sugar also plays a crucial role in the production of wine, beer, and spirits. The ethanol in beverage alcohol is formed when yeast consumes the natural sugars found in the raw material—for example, to make wine, vintners use yeast to convert fruit sugar into alcohol.
Sugars come in two kinds. Monosaccharides have a single molecule; they include glucose, fructose, and dextrose (all have the formula C6H12O6, but with different structures). Disaccharides are made of pairs of molecules, either two different monosaccharides or two of the same. Thus sucrose, the sugar found in sugar cane and sugar beets, is a glucose molecule and a fructose one, while malt-derived maltose is two glucose molecules. (Polysaccharides, including starches, are made of several sugar molecules bonded together.) For yeast to be able to consume sugars during fermentation, they must first break disaccharides down into monosaccharides (they must have polysaccharides broken down for them). See fermentation.
Commercial sugar can be dextrose, glucose, fructose, or sucrose, although most refined white sugar is pure sucrose. Commercial sugar is usually found in the form of white or brown crystals or a fine white powder.
Sugar Sources and Production Methods
Sugar cane is one of humanity’s oldest food ingredients; a native of Papua New Guinea, it has been domesticated since 8000 bce. See sugar cane. As far as can be determined, the processing of cane juice to obtain crystallized sugar dates back to the late first millennium bce, in northern India. Since then, production methods for transforming sugar cane into processed sugar have changed dramatically, but not uniformly: there are still places where the process used would be recognizable to the people who invented it. At this most basic level, sugar cane is chopped and ground, pressed, or pounded to extract its juice. This liquid is then heated in a series of ever-smaller kettles to evaporate the water and concentrate the sugar, causing sugar crystals to appear. The process is labor intensive. Modern technology has brought mechanical cane-cutting, steam mills, diffusers (which use hot water to wash the juice out of the fiber), vacuum pans, centrifuges, and charcoal filtration to the process. See Diffuser. To make sugar from beets, the roots are washed, sliced thin, and sent to a diffuser. The juice, like that of cane sugar, is heated to evaporate the water and concentrate the sugars, causing crystals to form. See beets.
With these more efficient production methods, modern commercial white sugar (whether from cane or from beets) is more refined than sugar available in the past. Until the late nineteenth century, it took a great deal of processing to make fine-crystaled white sugar, and much of the sugar in use was darker and coarser in grain. Solid loaves of unrefined sugar are sold in Asia as jaggery (also called gurh, gud, and gul) and in Latin America as panela or piloncillo. Other types of sugars are made from fruits such as dates; saps and resins of trees such as palm, coconut, and maple; and grains such as maize and barley.
Types of Sugar
Refined sugars available commercially include granulated sugar, which is the most highly refined form of commercial sugar. It’s always white, easy to pour and measure, and made for table use and for cooking and preserving. Granulated sugar does not dissolve well into cocktails, however, and is usually made into simple syrup for cocktail use. See simple syrup. Granulated sugar can also be found in so-called superfine form, which is a more finely grained sugar meant to dissolve quickly in liquids.
Other refined sugars include light and dark brown sugar, which contain molasses. The darker the sugar, the higher the molasses content. Molasses is a byproduct of sugar making. As the juice of sugar cane and sugar beets is boiled down to extract the sugar, the dark syrup that results from the boiling process is molasses. Natural brown sugar has residual molasses that was never cooked out of the sugar, whereas refined brown sugar has molasses added back to refined white sugar. This practice of adding molasses to refined white sugar allows manufacturers to ensure consistency from batch to batch because they can precisely measure the amount of molasses added to the sugar. The color, texture, and flavor of natural brown sugar vary based on how much molasses remains in the product. See
Some types of unrefined or partially refined brown sugars include muscovado, turbinado, and demerara. Muscovado is made by drying sugar crystals in low heat, sometimes outside in the sun. Turbinado and demerara are both dried in a centrifuge. (The centrifuge resembles a turbine, giving origin to the name turbinado.)
Proponents of unrefined sugars claim that these sugars contain minerals that provide some health benefits from consuming them, but research on this shows these claims to be unsupportable; the mineral content of unrefined sugar is simply too low to add nutritive value to the sugar. Nevertheless, unrefined sugars generally have richer and more complex aromas and flavors, making them desirable in certain cocktail applications.
Cocktail Uses
Sugar loaves used in the 1800s were different from any kind of sugar available today. Firstly, they were made of sugar that was refined less than modern sugar is—sometimes much less. Secondly, the loaves were more solid than any sugar loaf commercially available today and required special tools, such as “sugar nippers,” to break them down for use. In preparing drinks such as punches, it was common for a bartender to take lemons and rub their peels on a block of sugar, for the purpose of stripping the oils from the peel and transferring their aromas to the sugar block. Modern loaves would crumble if treated that way.
Granulated white sugar, whether in syrup or crystal form, lacks the complexity of those old loaf sugars, but it provides a bright, clean taste and a clear appearance in a drink. See sour. Evaporated cane juice, now in common use, is a bit softer in taste and slightly darker in color. Both of these sugars are usually fine-grained enough to dissolve without being made into syrup. (Before Prohibition, master bartenders insisted on granulated sugar in sours and syrup only in drinks such as the original Cock-Tail, where there wasn’t enough water to dissolve the sugar.) Brown sugars such as turbinado, muscovado and demerara are usually coarse-grained to the point that they will not dissolve with simple stirring or shaking or be too sticky to pour like white sugar, and must be made into syrups. They will darken an otherwise clear drink but also provide rich flavors from the molasses, reminding the drinker of caramel, honey, and vanilla. Brown sugars, thanks to the molasses content, also have a heavier body in syrup form. Their rich flavors and heavier body mean they pair best with dark spirits such as whisky, brandy, or rum. Dark sugars are especially well suited for tiki and other rum-based drinks. See tiki.
Similar syrups can be made from sugars such as the Indonesian gula jawa, a dark and sticky mix of palm and cane sugars; Indian palm sugar and jaggery; and Latin American panela and piloncillo. These are usually made as high-Brix rich simple syrup, as they are less sweet than granulated sugar and need the concentration. (The sugar content of a given liquid is referred to as “degrees Brix”; 1 degree Brix is equivalent to 1 gram of sucrose in 100 grams of solution. See Brix.) Jaggery and panela syrups are useful in making drinks such as punches, where the historical antecedent would have used sugars less refined than modern commercial sugars, and the extra flavor they bring won’t knock the drinks out of balance.
See also saccharification and sugar cane.
Foster, Kelli. “A Complete Visual Guide to 11 Different Kinds of Sugar.” Kitchn, December 8, 2014. http://www.thekitchn.com/a-complete-visual-guide-to-sugar-ingredient-intelligence-213715 (accessed April 27, 2021).
Geerligs, H. C. Prinsen. The World’s Cane Sugar Industry: Past and Present. Altrincham, UK: N. Rodger, 1912.
Solmonson, Leslie Jacobs. “How Sweet It Is: Using Different Sweeteners for Your Cocktails.” Chilled.http://chilledmagazine.com/how-sweet-it-is-using-different-sweeteners-for-your-cocktails (accessed April 27, 2021).
By: Michael Dietsch