The temporary halt in the rise of sugar

Sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar. When will I find something new to write about?

This time I'm taking a look at the use of adjuncts and sugar in brewing 1910 to 1920. The percentage of sugar fell from 14% in 1914 to under 10% in 1918. The use of malt adjuncts and unmalted corn for brewing stopped completely.


I'm still nowhere near sugared out.

The rise of sugar

Sugar week seems to have turned into sugar fortnight. Oh well. And I've barely even started looking at "Pure Beer agitation". Sugar quarter anyone?

The use of sugar and adjuncts gradually increased in popularity after the Free Mash Tun Act of 1880. By 1914 malt accounted for less than 80% of the fermentable material employed in
brewing. As you can see from the table below.


WW I knocked the percentage of adjuncts and sugar back considerably - down to zero in the case of adjuncts. But when normality returned, the proportion of sugar used started edging up again.

Sugar, sugar

"I discovered something really fascinating about the relative prices of malt, sugar and maize in WW I today, Dolores. . . . Dolores . . . Dolores!"

Apparently it isn't quite as fascinating as I'd imagined. The relative price thing. It's no wonder I hang around on the interweb so much. All the actual people around me, bizarrely, have no interest in discussing the price of brewing sugar in WW I. Philistines.

Right, so I've just trawled through Barclay Perkins WW I brewing logs noting down the prices of everything. Very nice of them to include the information. The results make fascinating reading. Maybe not to my family, but to me.

Between 1914 and 1920, the price of malt about trebled. The cost of maize increased a little more, by three and a half times. But the biggest jump was in the price of brewing sugar which, at its peak in late 1918-early 1919, was more than six times as expensive as it had been at the start of the war. Sugar went from costing a third less than malt per quarter to 50% more.



What's also striking is the complete disappearance of the more specialist types of malt - PA, SA and mild malt - in 1918 and 1919. No maize at all was used between October 1917 and October 1919. The reduction in the variety of brewing materials available inevitably had an impact on recipes and the character of finished beers.

Lots of sugar

I'm sure I mentioned my trip to London this week. Yesterday, it was. These day trips are a bit of an endurance test. I'm still knackered.

I'll be busy for weeks combing through everything, but I thought I'd give you a random taste. As we were halfway through a conversation about sugar, that seems a good place to start. I photographed logs from quite a few new breweries and guess what? They all used sugar. Lots of different types.

Russells Gravesend Brewery did something I'd not seen before. Use cane sugar, invert sugar and glucose in the same brew. And, just for good measure, something called "tintose". I suppose that's a proprietary sugar. In case you're wondering, it's from 1929 and the beer is 6d Ale. Best Mild, you could call it. OG 1041.55. Sugar made up 14% of the grist.

Sawdust beer

The British parliament isn't what it was. As these quotes from the debate on the Beer Bill of 1901 prove.

After the passing of the Free Mash Tun Act in 1880, which allowed brewers to use anything that wasn't harmful in the production of beer, there were various attempts to re-impose control on brewing ingredients. The 1901 Beer Bill proposed having two classes of drink: "malt beer" and "part-malt beer".

Sir Cuthbert Quiller spoke eloquently of the injurious effect of the Free Mash Tun Act:

"I should, however, like to point out once more the extraordinary increase of the use of sugar in proportion to malt that has taken place since 1880. In 1870 the quantity of sugar used in brewing was ; 295,000 cwts. ; in 1899 the quantity had increased to 2,943,752 cwts., or ten times the amount. To illustrate what the free mash tun has led to. I hold in my hand a Patent, No. 12241, which was taken out in 1899, for an improved process of converting wood, wood shavings, wood fibre and sawdust, as well as other materials, into glucose and alcohol. I think, Sir, you will agree with me that, if we are to consume glucose at all we i should certainly prefer it to be derived from some other source than sawdust. I am assured that this process has been employed in Germany for the past ten years — for export only, I imagine. Whether the patent lights have been exercised in this country I am unable to say, but, at any rate, 1 think it shows conclusively the necessity for enabling the public to obtain beer which they know has not been derived from any such source."

I don't understand his point. What could possibly be wrong with beer made from sawdust?

Consumer choice, Sir Cuthbert insisted, was what it was all about:

"We are prepared to let the public choose for themselves. The two classes of liquor which are defined in the Bill will stand on their own merits and fight their own battles for popular favour. We are told that people for the most part prefer beer made from chemicals, bright and sparkling. If that is so, they should welcome this Bill, because when they are thirsting for a glass of that chemical beer, which is so much the fashion, there will be no chance of their swallowing any of that thick heavy muddy stuff called "malt beer," which but for this Bill might be thrust upon them. De gustibus non est disputandum. But each person ought to be able to get what kind he likes, whether chemical or otherwise. I have found it very difficult to reconcile the zeal with which advocates of glucose and substitutes defend their concoctions as superior to old-fashioned malt and hops with their anxiety to be allowed to trade under the title of a drink which they assert to be inferior. The principle of warranty is one which it is difficult to attack, and it is this principle which furnishes one of the grounds upon which I ask the House to pass the Bill. It is the principle which underlies all legislation with respect not only to the adulteration of food, but to trade marks, the hall marking of precious metals, and like public safeguards. It is a principle which is already applied by law to beer in the greatest beer-drinking country in the world, and in most other countries force of public opinion is such as to render the employment of substitutes practically non-existent."

Mmmm, lovely chemical beer. "Two pints of chemical and a pint of malt, please." Who wouldn't want to be able to say that at the bar?



(Source: "The parliamentary debates", 1901, pages 1466 - 146.)

Why sugar is inverted

I'd been hoping to find something like this. An explanation of why brewers used invert sugar rather than straight cane sugar:

"It is more usual to add sugars to the wort in which they are fermented together with the maltose of the malt. The sugars generally employed are cane sugar, invert sugar — which is most largely used — and glucose. Refined cane sugar has to be inverted by the yeast before fermentation, and to a certain extent weakens the yeast, favouring the production of lactic acid, so that it is preferable to invert the sugar first."
(Source: "Chemistry for engineers and manufacturers" by Bertram Blount, Arthur George Bloxam, 1896, pages 193-194.)

Refined sugar vs invert sugar

This is a good one. I've seen it argued by homebrewers that brewing sugars are a waste of money. The line of reasoning goes that you may as well use table sugar as this will be inverted in the wort by invertase excreted by the yeast. Sounds reasonable enough.

But hang on a minute. Why the hell do breweries use invert brewing sugar if it's just the same as cheap refined sugar? Isn't sugar just sugar?

No, it isn't. Brewing sugar isn't just inverted refined sugar. It's inverted raw cane sugar. This contains more than just sucrose. And it's these "impurities" that provide the flavours brewers are looking for.

"Invert sugar made from refined sugar lacks the lusciousness and other characteristics desirable in a brewing sugar, so that raw cane sugars are generally used. In addition to invert sugar, uninverted saccharose and water, therefore, commercial invert contains from 0.2 to 0.7% of albuminoids, from 3 to 6% of unfermentable organic matter and from i to 3.5% of mineral matter, the latter being partly derived from the raw material and partly introduced as calcium carbonate to neutralise the acid used in effecting hydrolysis. Sulphuric acid is generally employed as hydrolyst because the comparative insolubility of calcium sulphate makes it possible to eliminate most of the mineral matter introduced for the purpose of neutralisation.

Raw beet sugar could not be used for the production of brewers' invert, on account of the objectionable flavour of the secondary constituents. No such objection would attach to the use of hightly refined beet sugar, but highly refined sugars are not used for the reasons already stated. Occasionally invert sugar is made from a mixture of raw cane sugar and high- grade raw beet sugars (first runnings) and the origin of such invert sugar is not readily detected by the palate or nose. It is, however, desirable to exclude it from the brewery, and this can usually be done by limiting the permissible percentage of albuminoids, which is higher in beet than in cane products. Brewers' invert is supplied in three grades, and it is reasonable to require them to contain less than the following percentages of albuminoids: No. I, 0.3%; No. II, 0.5%; and No. Ill, 0.75%. A good No. Ill will comply with the standard here set up for No. I, so that the above limits cannot be unduly stringent."
"Allen's commerical organic analysis", 1917, pages 7-8.

Inverting the stuff you buy in the supermarket to sweeten your tea won't give you brewing sugar. You need to start with a less refined sugar. Something like demerera sugar, I guess.

Pure beer

"Pure beer" is a concept that's been around for a while. But what exactly is "pure beer"? Beer without sugar?

I can remember some within CAMRA arguing that only beer brewed from malt and hops alone should be classified as Real Ale. Thankfully their crazy idea wasn't adopted. It would have left almost no Real Ale in Britain.

In the aftermath of the 1880 Free Mash Tun Act, there was a "Pure Beer" movement. Its aim was to re-establish a Reinheitsgebot in Britain. They even managed to get a bill to that effect into parliament. However it was never enacted and the movement petered out. (I plan returning to this movement at some point soon).

This letter sent to The Times in the 1880's demonstrates the public concern about the purity of their beer, but also ignorance about how it was brewed. The most revealing assertion in the letter is that sugar was employed "to meet the requirements of the public taste ".

"PURE BEER.

MR. E. R. MORITZ, chemist to the Country Brewers' Society, sends the following letter to the Times :—

Sir,—I observe in your report of "Briant v. Faulkner," tried on Tuesday before Mr. Justice Kay, that the interesting features in the case consisted in the facts disclosed about brewing and the judge's observations on the ingredients used at the present day in the manufacture of beer. Mr. Justice Kay observed that instead of beer being nowadays brewed from good and wholesome malt and hops, chemical processes were used for extracting beer from what was called invert sugar ; and he went on to comment in severe terms upon the sulphuric acid and gypsum employed in the process in question. As a matter of fact, however, beer is not extracted from invert sugar, and the process referred to consists in the preparation from cane sugar of invert sugar, which some brewers find it advantageous to mix in small proportions with their malt worts. Sulphuric acid certainly plays a part in the conversion of the sugar, but none of it, as such, is permitted to remain in the sugar, and consequently none can enter the beer; indeed, by conversion into gypsum the acid is, to all practical purposes, removed, and against the minute quantity of gypsum which may escape separation there cannot possibly be the minutest objection. It occurs naturally in the celebrated well waters of Burton, and it is in no inconsiderable degree responsible for the delicacy and flavour of the popular ales brewed in that district.

With regard to the use of sugar in brewing, it cannot be too frequently insisted upon that its employment is adopted simply to meet the requirements of the public taste in certain districts, and not with the object, which some persons would have us believe, of putting extra profits into the brewers' pockets. Nor must it be forgotten that our malts are by no means invariably "good and wholesome," and that intermixture with sugar solutions of good quality is productive of a sounder, purer, and more wholesome beer than that obtainable from the bulk of our malts when used alone.

Persons with any leanings towards so-called "pure beer" would do well to refer to Mr. Goschen's remarks to a deputation of hop and barley growers which waited on him on April 5 last year. Mr. Goschen pointed out that during the course of the prosecutions for beer dilution, so many of which took place about that time, the beer samples had been generally tested for deleterious substances by the Government chemists at Somerset House, and that not a single sample was found to contain any. Yet some of these beers had assuredly been in part brewed from that invert sugar which Mr. Justice Kay so severely denounces. Indeed, the pure beer cry, like so many of the agitations against brewers, is almost exclusively supported by privileged and irresponsible utterances, which, when critically examined, as was the case on April 5 last year, are found unsound and devoid of proper foundation."
"The Chemical Trade Journal" by Davis, 1888, page 179

Let me know if you're getting bored with sugar. It won't stop me writing about it, but it may make you feel better.

Brewing with sugar

I told you it was sugar week.

I'd never realised there were so many different ways of adding sugar to the wort. I'd sort of assumed it was always added in the copper.

"BREWING WITH SUGAR.

Sugar and syrup are used in large quantities, and by many brewers, for all descriptions of ales, porters and stouts, but like raw grain more as adjuncts to than as substitutes for malt. In 1847 sugar was first allowed to be used in brewing, and in 1874 all kinds of sugar and syrup were so allowed; under the head of statistics will be seen how this privilege has been used. The proportion used in any brewing varies greatly, ranging from 5 to 40 per cent. of the entire weight of mashing materials. Brewing with sugar requires far less labour than the ordinary malt brewing does, for the sugar is so easily and so quickly dissolved, either by condensed steam, by hot water, or by hot wort. Some have recommended that when cane sugar is used it should be introduced into the mash-tun with the other materials, in which case it would partly undergo conversion to a directly fermentable sugar, but if there were no other objection there would be the loss in draining to be considered. Often the sugar meets the malt wort in the underback; either it is placed in this vessel in the dry state or it is first dissolved ; in either case the mixed wort is pumped into the copper as a whole. Frequently, however, the sugar, dry or in solution, is let direct into the copper; sometimes a platform or cage holding it is suspended in the boiling wort until the sugar is dissolved. Other brewers add the sugar at a later stage, namely, in the hop-back, where the boiling wort on its way to the cooler dissolves the sugar or mixes itself with the sugar solution. It is preferable that the malt and sugar worts should at least meet in the copper, for thorough boiling of the saccharine material has a beneficial effect, and is a safeguard against its impurities. Moreover, by being so boiled together the two kinds of wort get thoroughly mixed together and with the hop extract, so that a perfect and equable solution is obtained; but if the sugar is placed in the hop- back these advantages may not occur, or may only partially occur, and a sticky wort may pass through the coolers and over the refrigerator, rendering the cleaning of these vessels more difficult. If the sugar wort does not meet the other wort until the fermenting vessels are reached, a preliminary boiling of the sugar wort should certainly have taken place, and even then there will be the difficulty of mixing the two kinds of wort in the fermenting vessels to be considered."
"A study of the history and of the art of brewing" by J. A. Nettleton, 1883, page 39

When were specialist brewing sugars first developed? I'm wondering about that one. Earlier that 1884, in any case. That''s the year of the Garton's advert above.

Brewing sugar again

It's sugar week here at Barclay Perkins. A bit weird, coming from someone who hasn't eaten any for almost 40 years. But here I am, doing my bit to restore brewing sugar to its rightful place. Right at the heart of British brewing.

For many years, I shared the general prejudice against the use of sugar. Why? Because I didn't know any better. As I've learned more about brewing, it's become clear that sugar isn't some nasty, cheap ingredient, but a valuable weapon in the brewer's arsenal.

Yet sugar's role in British brewing has largely been ignored or glossed over. Homebrew recipes for British styles are usually all malt, despite very few commercial beers being made that way. Why is that? Is it just some subliminal effect of the Reinheitsgebot that has turned homebrewers against sugar? And surely the Brewers' Association's definition of a traditional brewer doesn't help:

"A brewer who has either an all malt flagship (the beer which represents the greatest volume among that brewers brands) or has at least 50% of it’s volume in either all malt beers or in beers which use adjuncts to enhance rather than lighten flavor."

Time for a table. One that shows the steady presence of suger in postwar British brewing:


Around 15% was the average amount of sugar in grists. That's very similar to what I've seen in brewing records. It must be true.

Now where can I find out more about the composition of proprietary brewing sugars?