...I'm Sweet Enough.

A fundamental building block in mixed drinks, we thought we'd give you a brief insight into sugar: where it came from and how it got here.  I referenced a few sources to compile this, but in all fairness, the majority of this article has been heavily-influenced by Wayne Curtis' fine book on rum: 'And a Bottle of Rum - A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails'.

Sugarcane first appeared in Asia around 4000 B.C. - most likely Papua New Guinea.  As trade routes opened up and empires expanded, as did the reach of sugarcane, with the cultivation and processing moving west via China, India, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, Iberia and the Atlantic islands of Madeira, the Canary Islands and the Azores.  Christopher Columbus was subsequently responsible for carrying live sugarcane seedlings to the New World on his second trip in 1493 (his Father-in-Law was a Madeira sugar planter) planting these on Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic and Haiti).  It turns out the Caribbean islands offered the perfect climate and soil conditions for sugarcane and the colonists were quick to establish plantations in Mexico, Cuba, Jamaica and Puerto Rico.

To produce sugar, the cane syrup is machine-pressed from the cane and heated until near-crystallisation.  It is subsequently cooled and cured (this is the point at which the by-product molasses appears).

With great quantities of sugar being produced in the New World colonies, prices fell in Europe and many of the plantation owners were ruined.  Meanwhile, New World plantation owners were making a killing, building great houses like the one below...

In England, the demand grew quickly as sugar evolved from a luxury item only the aristocratic classes could afford, to a staple for the common man.

To keep up with the sugar needs of Europe and their emerging colonies, slaves were imported.  On the colonised islands, native tribes had been decimated by European disease (such as small-pox) and poor working conditions.  Thus began the Trans-Atlantic triangular slave trade, carrying sugar and rum from the Caribbean and New England to Europe where these were sold and the profits used to purchase goods to be traded in West Africa for slaves to be transported to the Caribbean to work in the plantations, to produce sugar for...you get the idea.

As the European powers continued their colonisation of the world, sugar, in turn, reached new territories: Brazil, Pacific Islands and Australia, among others.  Significantly, in 1747 a German scientist discovered sucrose in Beet Root and shortly after, beet sugar began production.  This didn't really take off until the British blocked all Caribbean trade with Napoleon's French Empire.  Beet sugar grew as a result and now accounts for 30% of today's sugar production.

An important point to note is that, currently,  sugar prices in the US and Japan are higher than the rest of the world due to import tariffs and as a result their domestically-produced high-fructose corn syrup is favoured over sugar, especially for soft drinks and processed foods.

The trend with us bartenders is to make our own 'cane syrup', usually to 65 degree brix.  'Degree brix' is the sugar content in an aqueous solution, with one degree brix equating to 1 gram of sucrose in 100 grams of solution measuring representing the strength of the solution as a percentage of weight.  Hence, if you make your cane syrup (or sugar syrup, or simple solution) in a 2:1 ratio of sugar to water, then the degrees brix is 65.