Types of Sweeteners for Beverages: Pros, Cons, and How to Choose

How sugar, sugar substitutes, and artificial sweeteners change the taste, body, and label of beer, soda, RTDs, and functional drinks.

Last updated: October 22, 2026

Sweeteners are a fundamental aspect of formulation for most prominent commercial beverage formats. Whether it’s soda, energy drinks, functional RTDs, NA beer, or a backsweetened cider, the sweetness of a refreshment can make or break the experience. Even if zero-sugar or reduced-sugar labels aren’t a priority for you, the way you sweeten beverages is a significant decision for your end product. Most drinkers want less sugar, and everyone wants great flavor.

In the International Food Information Council's (IFIC) 2025 Food & Health Survey, 75% of Americans said they were trying to limit or avoid sugar.¹ They haven't lost their taste for sweetness, though. In a separate 2025 IFIC survey, 58% of Americans named sweet as their favorite taste, yet 78% said it's important to reduce the overall sweetness of their diet.²

Cane sugar, sugar substitutes, and artificial sweeteners each solve part of that problem, but they also create new ones. Knowing where each type of sweetener fits, which options work best in different formats, and how aroma can influence the perception of sweetness can make it easier to adjust sugar without losing the flavors your customers crave.

How Sweeteners Shape Taste and Body in a Beverage

A sweetener influences how sweet a drink tastes, along with how sour, bitter, full, and fruity it is. Swap one sweetener for another and that one decision can dynamically influence all of those qualities. 

• Taste curve. Sugar's sweetness arrives quickly, peaks, and fades fast. Many high-intensity sweeteners take longer to reach full sweetness or linger after swallowing, and some carry bitter or metallic side tastes.³

• Body and mouthfeel. Sweeteners used at tiny doses add almost no weight, so reduced-sugar drinks can taste thin unless the formula restores body another way.

• Label impact. Most sugars count as added sugars on the Nutrition Facts panel. The 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend no more than 10 grams of added sugar per meal,⁴ and checking labels is one of the most common ways shoppers plan their sugar intake.¹

• Fermentability. In beer, cider, and kombucha, whether yeast can eat a sweetener determines if it goes in before fermentation, after it, or at packaging.

• Stability and cost. Some sweeteners slowly break down in acidic drinks over shelf life, and cost per unit of sweetness varies widely between options.⁵

No single sugar substitute matches sugar's taste curve, body, and clean finish, which is why many reduced-sugar drinks use a blend. Pairing a sweetener that hits fast with one that builds slowly can track sugar's curve more closely than either one alone.⁶ That’s why some zero-sugar colas combine aspartame and acesulfame potassium. 

Types of Sweeteners and Where Each One Fits

Most beverage sweeteners fall into five groups: nutritive sugars, sugar alcohols, rare sugars, plant-based high-intensity sweeteners, and artificial sweeteners. Each group trades sweetness, body, label impact, and fermentability differently.

Beverage Sweetener Comparison Chart

Nutritive Sugars (Cane Sugar, Honey, Maple, and Fruit Juice)

Nutritive sugars like cane sugar, honey, maple, and fruit juice give a drink sugar’s full sweetness and body, and they count as added sugars on the label.

Honey and maple bring their own flavors along with sweetness, so they fit best in drinks where floral or caramel notes make sense. Fruit juice adds sweetness, acidity, and fruit flavor.

The tradeoff is the label. Honey, maple, and most juice concentrates count as added sugars,¹¹ even though many shoppers see them as more natural than white sugar. Whole Foods Market named 'Sweet, but make it mindful' a top 2026 trend, pointing to shoppers choosing products subtly sweetened with cane sugar, honey, or maple over sugar alternatives.¹⁵

Sugar Alcohols (Erythritol)

Erythritol adds bulk and mild sweetness with close to zero calories, which makes it a common partner for stevia and monk fruit. It’s about 60–70% as sweet as sugar, so it fills in the body high-intensity sweeteners lack and softens their aftertaste.⁹

On the Nutrition Facts panel, erythritol is not counted as an added sugar. Brands can list it separately as a sugar alcohol under Total Carbohydrate.¹²

Sugar alcohols are sometimes a poor fit for drinks because people consume beverages in larger amounts, and they can cause digestive discomfort. Erythritol is the best tolerated of the group, which makes it the most practical sugar alcohol for drinks.⁹ Its main sensory drawback is a cooling sensation that some drinkers notice at higher doses. 

Rare Sugars (Allulose)

Allulose is chemically a sugar, but the FDA allows brands to leave it out of Total Sugars and Added Sugars and count it at 0.4 calories per gram. It still appears in Total Carbohydrate.¹⁰

Allulose is about 70% as sweet as sugar with some of sugar's body. In sensory testing, a sucrose-allulose mix came closer to sugar's taste curve than most alternatives.³

Plant-Based High-Intensity Sweeteners (Stevia and Monk Fruit)

Stevia and monk fruit deliver zero-calorie sweetness from plant sources, which is why they often appear on labels promising no artificial sweeteners.

Stevia sweeteners are purified steviol glycosides from the stevia leaf, and they’re 200 to 400 times sweeter than sugar. Monk fruit sweeteners come from mogrosides in luo han guo fruit and are 100 to 250 times sweeter than sugar.⁷

Many formulas combine the two. In sensory testing, both peaked in sweetness at the same time as sugar but at lower intensity, and both left bitter, metallic, and chemical side tastes that lasted after the sweetness faded. Stevia’s sweetness dropped off quickly, while monk fruit’s lingered.³ How pronounced these off-notes are depends heavily on the purity and grade of the extract. 

Stevia can break down slowly in acidic drinks, and one study found its stability depended on pH, storage temperature, and time.¹⁶

Artificial Sweeteners (Sucralose, Aspartame, and Ace-K)

Artificial sweeteners deliver zero-calorie sweetness at very low doses.

Sucralose is about 600 times sweeter than sugar and holds up well to heat and acid.⁷,⁵ Aspartame is about 200 times sweeter than sugar and is often described as tasting close to sugar,⁷ but it breaks down in acidic drinks over time and with heat.⁵ Products containing aspartame also require a phenylalanine statement on the label.⁷ Ace-K hits fast and turns bitter at higher doses, so it's usually blended with aspartame or sucralose.³

Stevia is the better fit for labels built around plant-based ingredients.

Sweeteners in Beer, Cider, and Other Fermented Beverages

Fermentable sugar added after fermentation turns into alcohol and CO2. In a can or bottle with live yeast still present, that means refermentation, overcarbonation, and the risk of burst packages. The two most common approaches are stabilizing the drink through pasteurization or sterile filtration, or using a sweetener that yeast can't ferment.

Non-Fermentable Sweeteners for Backsweetening Beer and Cider

Lactose, erythritol, allulose, and high-intensity sweeteners let brewers and cider makers backsweeten without pasteurizing or filtering.

• Lactose. Brewer's yeast lacks the enzyme needed to break lactose down, so it stays in the finished beer as a mild sweetness with extra body.¹⁷ It's the traditional sweetener in milk stouts and a common one in pastry sours, and because it comes from milk, it matters for allergen labeling. Mixed-culture beers require some fact checking, though. Some Brettanomyces strains can metabolize lactose, and the ability varies by strain.¹⁸ Ask your culture supplier before relying on lactose for residual sweetness.

• Erythritol. Standard brewing yeast doesn't ferment erythritol, which makes it a practical backsweetener for cider and hard seltzer. Kombucha makers should test before relying on it, since Gluconobacter, an acetic acid bacterium found in kombucha cultures, can oxidize erythritol.

• Allulose. Baker's yeast did not metabolize allulose in testing, and allulose reduced the yeast's CO2 production.¹⁴ Adding it after primary fermentation keeps it from slowing an active ferment. For bottle-conditioned drinks, check carbonation, since allulose may slow the refermentation that carbonates them.

• High-intensity sweeteners. Stevia, monk fruit, and sucralose go in at tiny doses and give yeast nothing meaningful to ferment. Pairing one with erythritol or allulose adds back some of the body a low-sugar cider or seltzer loses. Check the spec sheet first, since many stevia and monk fruit products are blended with carriers like dextrose, which yeast will ferment.

Backsweetened drinks taste different once they're carbonated and cold, so taste them at serving temperature before locking in a dose.

When Sweeteners Require TTB Formula Approval

Stevia, monk fruit, erythritol, and allulose aren't on TTB's exemption list, so malt beverages that use them need their own approved formula.¹⁹,²⁰ TTB does exempt lactose, honey, maple syrup, and several traditional sugars, including brown sugar, candi sugar, and molasses, from formula approval for malt beverages.¹⁹

The exemption list covers both beer and malt beverages, including non-alcoholic beer made with malted barley and hops, which remains under TTB labeling and formulation rules.²¹

Cider at 7% ABV and above follows TTB’s wine regulations instead. Cider under 7% ABV uses FDA labeling rules, including the Nutrition Facts panel, while TTB still oversees production and taxes.²²

Fruit Additions Are a Sugar Decision

Fruit purees and juices add fermentable sugar along with flavor. Added before or during fermentation, most of that sugar ferments out, leaving fruit flavor with less sweetness and more alcohol. Added after fermentation, it brings residual sweetness and the same refermentation risk as any other fermentable sugar. 

In FDA-labeled drinks such as sodas and cider under 7% ABV, juice concentrates used to sweeten also count toward added sugars on the Nutrition Facts panel.¹¹ Fruit additions can also bring haze, sediment, and flavor that varies from one crop to the next. 

Aroma Can Make Drinks Taste Sweeter

Aroma can increase a drink’s perceived sweetness without adding any sugar. Researchers call this odor-induced sweetness enhancement,²³ and one of the earliest studies found that strawberry aroma increased the perceived sweetness of sweetened whipped cream.²⁴

Fruity aromas show the most consistent effect. When researchers screened aroma compounds from orange juice, several fruity esters and the terpene Linalool made the juice aroma smell sweeter. One ester, ethyl 2-methylbutanoate, also made a juice with 32% less sugar taste sweeter than the same juice without it.²⁵

In another study, adding mango aroma made a 2.24% sugar beverage taste as sweet as a 2.96% sugar solution, for about a quarter less sugar for the same sweetness.²⁶ The effect is modest, and it works best in drinks with less sugar. So, while aroma won't replace a sweetener, it can lower how much a formula needs.

How to Choose a Sweetener for Your Beverage

The right sweetener depends on your format, your label goals, and whether live yeast is still in the package.

• Soda and RTDs. Sucralose holds up to acid and heat over shelf life. Stevia or monk fruit fit plant-based labels, and erythritol or allulose restore the body they lack.
  

• Sugar’s taste with less sugar. Blend allulose with cane sugar. Allulose stays off the Total and Added Sugars lines.
  

• Cider and hard seltzer. Erythritol or a high-intensity sweetener backsweetens without refermentation. Check blends for dextrose carriers.
  

• Beer and malt beverages. Lactose, honey, and maple syrup are exempt from TTB formula approval. Stevia, monk fruit, erythritol, and allulose need an approved formula.
  

• Kombucha and mixed-culture beers. Test erythritol and lactose with your culture first, since some kombucha bacteria and Brettanomyces strains can break them down.
  

• Naturally sweetened drinks. Cane sugar, honey, or maple, with aroma carrying more of the perceived sweetness to keep the dose down.
  

Whatever you choose, taste the finished beverage cold and carbonated before you lock in a dosing rate.

Sweeten Less and Let Aroma Carry More with Abstrax

Lowering the sugar content in your beverage? Exploring sweetener options? That means balancing taste, body, labels, and fermentation without introducing off-notes. That's the kind of problem we solve at Abstrax.

The Skyfarm Series delivers TTB-approved, shelf-stable herb, spice, and fruit flavors with 100% utilization and no workflow modifications. 

Whether you're reformulating a soda, backsweetening a cider, or developing a hop water, Skyfarm products are designed to deliver recognizable flavor and aroma consistently from benchtop to production scale.

If you're ready to start benchtop testing or want to talk through a reduced-sugar formulation, contact us today and let's get to work.

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