Making Brewers Caramel

Caramel Colorant – for adding color to beers, viagra 40mg usually historic British Ales.

So…here is a very very simple way of making caramel colorant.

On color and time…

The color depends on how long you cook the sugar. I can’t give you a time. You have to learn from experience. Start by just doing a little and seeing from your ‘eye’. Pull a little sample every bit or so so you can see how the color progresses. Do, cheapest for the love of everything holy, understand that the dial on your stove has more levels than ‘inferno’. Cook gently and don’t be in a hurry. If it spells like ‘burnt ass’ throw it away, start over. For those kitchen experts, you don’t need water, but you already know that. There is also a way to make ammonia caramel, the one specific to beers, but that is very finicky and can produce cancer causing chemicals, seizures in rats, growth of tail, barking at moon, etc etc. So lets just stick with this way right now. The best way to tell the ‘color’ is to dilute it in water and compare it to a know SRM/EBC beer. Then back calculate.

Instructions for making your own ‘simple’ caramel colorant:

  • 2 parts light brown sugar
  • 1 part water
  1. Heat brown sugar and water in a very heavy bottomed pot
  2. Stir as it cooks and darkens
  3. Stop when nearly black. If it smells ‘burnt’ start over.
  4. Stop by adding 1 part water and stir to dissolve. Be careful as it will spit like an angry Llama.


  • You can really screw up a pot if you get it too hot
  • Have a good bit of ventilation, as this can smoke a bit.

Use 2x as much brown sugar (by weight) for the final amount of caramel colorant. E.g. if you need 50g of caramel colorant then you need 100g of light brown sugar.


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