Not really, we’re talking about beer. Specifically, brewing sugar additions to barley wort, not mead or cider, or distilled spirits. Completely different cups of tea. Let’s get back on track and less 1-dimensional. And less melodramatic. Many types of beer benefit from a little brewing sugar. It makes the wort more fermentable for the yeast and can produce a better balanced end product. Five to 15% isn’t unusual. Up to 25% or even more in some traditional English Milds. Generally, though, most people aren’t going to be able to distinguish which source of monosaccharides was used in most cases. Light candi sugar, invert no.1 and HFCS are too similar to distinguish apart in the final product in most cases. Dark candi sugar (products of Maillard reactions) and certainly luscious molasses added to invert nos.2, 3 and 4 are what can be more distinguishable, depending on the recipe and drinker. But you can make British brewing inverts with HFCS and Belgian candi sugar from HFCS. No one is going to be able to tell any difference in the final product. It really is just glucose. (Fructose is essentially just a form of glucose.) It’s very easy to test yourself. I did and now use the cheapest sugar available where I am, which is sucrose processed from sugar beet. Awful stuff I don’t use otherwise. I invert it first, of course. Quality unrefined cane sugars are like ‘gold dust’ where I am and relatively very expensive, thanks to the profiteering cartels, so that precious stuff gets strictly reserved for baking, where it shines best.
