Cane Sugar
Also known as: raw cane sugar, sugarcane sugar
Sugar milled from the pressed juice of sugarcane. Fully refined white grades are nearly pure sucrose, while raw and less-refined grades (such as demerara, muscovado, and turbinado) retain varying amounts of molasses, giving color, mineral character, and caramel depth.
How cane sugar is prepared
In fermented and distilled drinks, cane juice or molasses is usually a substrate rather than a sweetener, feeding the yeast to produce spirits such as rum and cachaça. In mixed drinks it acts directly as a sweetener, either as granulated or fine bar sugar muddled or stirred in, or dissolved into simple syrup and specialty syrups like falernum.
Fermentation with a SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) that contributes bright acidity.
Black and green tea kombucha is listed on the photographed label.[6]
Black and green teas are fermented into kombucha.[7]
Black and green tea kombucha is listed on the photographed label.[8]
Empress uses Black and Green Tea Kombucha in Beetroot Turmeric: a sweetened infusion of black and green teas fermented with a kombucha culture.[9]
Empress uses Black and Green Tea Kombucha in Ginger Goji-berry: a sweetened infusion of black and green teas fermented with a kombucha culture.[9]
Empress uses Black and Green Tea Kombucha in Moonbrew: a sweetened infusion of black and green teas fermented with a kombucha culture.[10]
Empress uses Black and Green Tea Kombucha in Strawberry Hibiscus: a sweetened infusion of black and green teas fermented with a kombucha culture.[9]
In depth
Origins in Island Southeast Asia
Sugarcane was first domesticated in the islands of Southeast Asia, and long before crystalline sugar became a trade commodity people there were fermenting cane juice into alcoholic drinks. Traditional cane and palm wines such as basi, intus, and palek in the Philippines, and the drinks recorded among the ancient Javanese and Malay, show that cane's earliest beverage role was as a fermentable base rather than a table sweetener. Marco Polo noted a good wine made from sugarcane in the region that is now Iran, and Sanskrit sources mention a fermented cane drink, indicating how widely the practice traveled across South and Southeast Asia. These traditions established the foundational principle that carries through much of cane's beverage history: the sugar in the juice is consumed by fermentation, not left to sweeten the finished liquid.[1]
Arrack and the Asian cane distillates
As distillation knowledge spread through Asia and the Middle East, fermented cane and palm liquids were distilled into arrack, a family of spirits produced across the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia. Some styles are built on sugarcane and molasses, fermented with cakes of red rice carrying the necessary yeasts and molds, while others rely on the sap of coconut or other palm flowers. The Batavia style, associated with Indonesia, is distilled from sugarcane and prized for a distinctive funky character, and it became an essential flavoring in European punches, most famously the Swedish and Finnish punsch made by combining arrack with sugar, citrus, tea, and spices. Arrack predates the New World cane spirits and is often described as a forerunner to cachaça and, through it, to rum.[2]
Cachaça and the Portuguese Atlantic
When the Portuguese moved sugar production from Madeira to Brazil in the sixteenth century, they brought pot stills and the practice of distilling fermented cane. The result, distilled directly from fresh sugarcane juice rather than molasses, became cachaça, also known as pinga and caninha. It grew so popular that the crown attempted to ban it in the seventeenth century to protect Portuguese grape brandy, provoking a revolt that ended in its legalization. Cachaça became entangled in the Atlantic economy, shipped to Europe as part of the trade that moved money and enslaved people across the ocean. Today it is the most consumed cane spirit in the world, largely within Brazil, and abroad it is best known as the base of the caipirinha, in which the spirit is combined directly with lime and cane sugar.[3]
Rum, the Caribbean, and naval tradition
In the seventeenth-century Caribbean, workers on sugar plantations discovered that molasses, a byproduct of refining cane sugar, could be fermented and distilled into rum. The spirit spread quickly to colonial North America, where New England became a major distilling center, and it became deeply woven into the triangular trade and colonial economies. Rum also became the drink of the Royal Navy, issued as a daily ration, watered into grog, and flavored with lime juice. French-speaking territories developed rhum agricole, distilled from fresh cane juice rather than molasses, echoing the cachaça method. Across all these styles, cane in the form of juice or molasses serves as the fermentation substrate; the finished spirit carries cane character but little residual sweetness unless deliberately added.[1]
Cane sugar as sweetener in the classic cocktail
Alongside its role as a fermentation feedstock, cane sugar became a direct ingredient in mixed drinks, where its job is simply to sweeten and balance acidity. The daiquiri, born in Cuba around the turn of the twentieth century, is built on rum, fresh lime juice, and sugar stirred until dissolved, and its recipe echoes the sugar-and-citrus rations of British sailors. The mojito relies traditionally on cane sugar, sometimes sugarcane juice itself, muddled with mint and lime before rum and soda are added. Because granulated sugar can be slow to dissolve in cold liquids, bartenders often reach for very fine caster or superfine sugar, sold specifically for mixed drinks, or for powdered sugar in some Havana preparations.[4]
Raw grades, syrups, and modern practice
Less-refined cane sugars have found their own place in the bar. A dirty mojito, for example, calls for gold rum and raw or demerara sugar, the latter a light brown, partially refined sugar produced from the first crystallization of cane juice, which lends a caramel note absent from pure white sugar. Rather than dosing drinks with dry sugar at all, many recipes use simple syrup, cane sugar dissolved in water, for even sweetening. Cane sugar also underpins specialty syrups such as falernum, a Caribbean rum, lime, and almond-spice syrup used in tropical and tiki drinks, and the tropical blended classics such as the piña colada layer cane-derived sweetness with fruit and coconut. Modern beverage culture increasingly prizes fresh ingredients and lighter, less sugary profiles, but cane sugar in one grade or another remains a constant across both fermented cane spirits and the drinks built on them.[5]
References
- [1]EncyclopediaRum — Wikipedia↑§1↑§4
- [2]EncyclopediaArrack — Wikipedia↑§2
- [3]EncyclopediaCachaça — Wikipedia↑§3
- [4]EncyclopediaDaiquiri — Wikipedia↑§5
- [5]EncyclopediaMojito — Wikipedia↑§6
- [6]Product informationAKA Fig Leaves — photographed bottle label↑prepared
- [7]Product informationAka - Kombucha Genmaicha - Analcolico↑prepared
- [8]Product informationAKA Jasmine — photographed bottle label↑prepared
- [9]ProducerKombucha (empress.no)↑prepared↑prepared↑prepared
- [10]ProducerWinealts (empress.no)↑prepared