HILIC is a very versatile technique. It requires a polar stationary phase designed for HILIC, such as the ACQUITY UPLC BEH Amide column, and a mobile phase with a larger proportion of acetonitrile (or acetone) and a smaller proportion of water. A classical method for sugars is the separation with acetonitrile/water on an amino column. This is a HILIC technique.
I have shown the analysis of ethanol and sugars in fermentation broth (beer) with UPLC at the HPLC conference, so it does work.
Here is a brief brochure that gives you two examples on how this column works:
http://www.waters.com/webassets/cms/lib ... 3122en.pdf
RI detectors are fine. We have used both RI and ELSD for such applications. The advantage of ELSD is that you can use gradients, as you can see in the application example.