Khandsari, cane sugar and other Indian sugars in beer
Every Indian kirana shop sells four or five cane sugars. To a brewer they are all sucrose with different amounts of everything else. Here is what that everything else does to your beer.
Most Indian sugar is sucrose with a story
Cane sugar is sucrose: one glucose and one fructose joined together. Brewing yeast splits sucrose with the enzyme invertase and ferments both halves completely. So every cane sugar in an Indian market is, at its core, almost fully fermentable.
What differs is how far it has been refined. The more refined the sugar, the purer the sucrose and the less flavour it leaves behind. The less refined, the more molasses, minerals and cooked flavour it carries into the beer. Choosing a sugar is really choosing how much of that extra character you want.
Plantation white and refined sugar
Most white sugar made in India is plantation white sugar, produced in the mill by double sulphitation clarification. It is very pure sucrose. In beer it adds alcohol and dryness with essentially no flavour, which is exactly what a brewer wants for a Belgian tripel or a dry, strong golden ale.
Refined sugar, made by a further refining step, is purer still. For brewing purposes the two behave the same. As a rule of thumb, 1 kg of white sugar dissolved into 1 hectolitre of wort raises the extract by about 1 °Plato, which is roughly 4 gravity points. On a 10 hl brewhouse, 10 kg of sugar adds about 1 °P to the batch.
Khandsari sits between white sugar and jaggery
Khandsari is the traditional small-scale sugar of north India, made in khandsari units rather than large mills. The cane juice is boiled in open pans and the crystals separated, often by centrifuge, without the full clarification a big mill uses. The result is a coarse, light brown to off-white crystal that keeps a little molasses.
In beer, khandsari ferments almost as completely as white sugar but leaves a faint honey and caramel note. That makes it useful in an English golden ale, a Belgian blonde or a bitter where you want a touch of character without the full weight of jaggery. Quality varies between producers, so buy from one source and taste a spoonful first.
Jaggery, shakkar and bura
Jaggery (gur) is unrefined: cane juice boiled down until it sets, with the molasses left in. It is mostly sucrose with some invert sugar, moisture and minerals. It brings toffee, earthy and sometimes smoky flavours. Our guide to brewing with jaggery covers it in depth.
Shakkar is jaggery dried and broken into a powder. It dissolves more easily and behaves like jaggery in beer.
Bura is a fine, powdered sugar used in north Indian sweets. It is essentially white sugar in a different form. Brew with it as you would white sugar.
Mishri is rock sugar, large clear crystals of sucrose. It is pure enough to treat like white sugar, just slower to dissolve.
How much sugar a beer can take
Simple sugars ferment more completely than malt sugars, so they thin the body and dry the finish. That is useful in moderation. Typical ranges:
- 5 to 10% of fermentables in an English bitter or pale ale for a slightly drier finish.
- 10 to 20% in Belgian tripels, golden strong ales and dubbels.
- Above 20% and many beers taste thin, hot and cidery, especially with a stressed yeast.
Calculate sugar as a share of total extract, not total weight. A 10% sugar addition by extract in a 15 °P wort is 1.5 °P from sugar, which is about 15 kg per 10 hl.
Where to add sugar in a commercial brewhouse
Most brewers dissolve sugar into the kettle in the last 10 to 15 minutes of the boil. The heat sanitises it and the volume dilutes it so it does not scorch on the element or jacket. Add it slowly with the agitator running, or dissolve it in hot liquor first. The one floor detail worth knowing: a 25 kg bag of sugar tipped into a kettle without stirring can sit as a dense layer on the bottom and caramelise on a direct-fired base.
For very strong beers, some brewers add part of the sugar to the fermenter after the first few days. Yeast ferments the harder malt sugars first and then the simple sugar, which can help a strong beer finish dry. Always boil and cool the syrup before adding it. Unrefined sugars like jaggery and khandsari can carry wild yeast and bacteria.
Sugars and the wider adjunct picture
In India, sugar is one of several adjuncts alongside rice and maize. Each changes cost, flavour and fermentability differently. Our guide to rice and maize adjuncts in India covers the cereal side, while brewing sugars explained covers the global sugar options such as dextrose and candi syrup.
Choosing between them is a question of chemistry as much as cost: how each adjunct changes the wort's sugar profile, nitrogen and the yeast's job. That understanding is where brewing science earns its place.
Your first step: buy 250 grams each of white sugar, khandsari and jaggery, dissolve each in a litre of water, take a gravity reading and taste all three side by side.
Common questions
Is khandsari sugar good for brewing?
Yes. It ferments almost completely like white sugar but leaves a faint honey and caramel note. It suits golden ales, bitters and Belgian blondes.
How much does 1 kg of sugar raise the gravity of 1 hectolitre?
About 1 °Plato, which is roughly 4 gravity points.
What is the difference between jaggery and khandsari?
Jaggery is unrefined cane juice boiled until it sets, with all the molasses kept in. Khandsari is crystallised and separated, so it is lighter and closer to white sugar.
