Can I make my brew sweet?

[Datanode101]

How can I make a 40 pint kit of dark ale and a stout sweet, I just poured some out and added some lemonade and apart from it putting hairs on my chests (You know I like to experiment with they old sugar contents...LOL), Id like to know if there's a way to make it sweet and at what point, if at all? Honey for 2nd fermentation?

Thanks

 

[Galena]

I think if you mash at a high temperature (perhaps 70C) to make it less fermentable and use a low attenuating yeast it may give you a sweet beer?
Sorry ignore that it would only work with All Grain

 

[marshbrewer]

Any sugar you put in that is fermentable will get eaten by the yeast and turn into alcohol - that includes honey.

So you have to use a non fermentable sugar like lactose, as they do in milk stout.

 

[Datanode101]

yeah I'm very basic, I would love to do it from scratch, but it's the cheap cans that I can get for about £11.00 that makes 40 pints, you know the ones....

lactose? at what point?

I don't really want to mess with the alcohol again, that last batch had me crying on the phone to my X....LOLOLOL

 

[marshbrewer]

Put it in the FV with your kit and whatever sugars / malt extract you are using. Or you could add it at the end, it doesn't matter, except I imagine adding it at the end might be difficult to get it to dissolve, as at that point in the process you don't want to me splashing the beer around and risking adding oxygen.

You could always buy a 500g pack, add it to your pints of what you are drinking now half a teaspoon at a time until you get the sweetness you want, then scale up the maths to work out how much to put into a 40 pint batch?

 

[Datanode101]

What about them little bottles of flavourings that you get that you add to alcohol, to like make peach snaps? etc. ? just before bottling?

 

[marshbrewer]

I don't know; you would need to check what was in them, and if any of the sugars in then we're fermentable. If they were, then they would just ferment out in the bottle.

 

[Datanode101]

Thanks!

 

[micklupulo]

The old Dave Line book recommended putting one saccharine tablet per gallon in the FV though as I recall he did not mention sweetness but he thought it knocked the harsh edge off that some brews produce. It must have increased sweetness though hardly perceptible at that dosage.

 

[David_M]

If you are bottling try sucralose. I use Morrisons own brand in cider, 20g takes the dry edge off 24 litres of dry cider. I dissolve it with the sugar when batch priming.

 

[Drunkula]

Yeah, try different sweeteners. I did a cider split with stevia, saccharin... a few others. Some are really horrible like harsh or metallic. Find what you like. You can steal loads of little packets from B&Bs to see which ones you like.

 

[Datanode101]

This is great news, I'm going to try 40 x half a gram at the beginning of the brew, and see how I get on, Been using lemonade as a sweetener and it's lovely!(Bitter top) So if this method will take that sharpness of it then happy days, I shall report back with results.

Thanks again.

 

[The Baron]

If you decide to add lactose do it at either boil/mixing time DO NOT add to beer that has been carbed or at bottling time. If you do you have seen the Mentos thing that kids do in a pop bottle expect that to happen
You have been warned Ps I use Lactose to sweeten my beers.