ginger beer without cane sugar?

[zoe]

I've started a "bug" for ginger beer with cane sugar, but I'm wondering if I can make the beer itself with some other sweetener. I know the fermentation/carbonation process depends on some kind of sugar - but does anyone know if agave nectar, brown rice syrup, or beet sugar would work, for example?

[bittersweet]

I have made ginger bug before with both honey and Palm Sugar. The honey version had a trouble getting the fermentation going. The recipie I used had a lot of sweetner per water volume I have discovered, which may have caused the problems with the honey version. It turned out quite tasty, but it took a long time to ferment.

The Palm sugar version was much better in fermenting, plus palm sugar is my favorite solid sweetner, so the taste was excellent. I find palm sugar in Asian Markets, it comes in a solid cake or a bag of lumps. The lumps are easier to work with, but often heating palm sugar is needed to break up the lumps.

Palm sugar is tapped off the flower shoots of several varieties of wine palms. If the syrup isn't boiled and made into sugar within 8 hours, it will ferment into wine. Palm wine is a popular home brew in the tropics.

One note on working with palm sugar, palm sugar stores heat a lot longer than cane sugar. I mention this because I have burnt my tounge badly tasting out of the pot a few times. The first time I made ice cream with it, I didn't refidgerate the custard over night, but made custard in the morning and churned it in the evening. I could not get the ice cream to freeze even though I churned it for a couple of hours and kept adding salt and ice to the churn. The palm sugar stored so much heat that even though the custard seemed cool enough, it could not loose that last bit of heat and freeze. I've made palm sugar ice cream since, and I chill the custard overninght, and it makes very good smooth ice cream.