Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Back-sweetening w/ Lactose?

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Back-sweetening w/ Lactose?

    Just brewed a new stout recipe for the first time and for whatever reason we overshot our IBUs by ~10. The beer tastes good, but is definitely out of balance w/ a lingering hop bitterness that isn't super pleasant. Considering it's a "Breakfast" stout anyways, we figured some milk sugar would fit in nicely.

    How would you guys go about adding this to finished beer? My thoughts were to boil the lactose in as little water as necessary and run off to one of our yeast brinks to allow to cool before pushing into the Brite before transfer. My only concern from there is potential DO pickup which would probably be low due to the boiling, but figured we could bubble some CO2 from the bottom through the lactose solution to help scrub whatever air is left.

    Would this work? Any other things we should consider?

  • #2
    Lactose doesn't taste the same as other sugars. It's sweet, but not very. Sucrose is the benchmark at "1.0" on the scale, lactose is 0.16. But it's not fermentable, so it's got that going for it. I think of lactose as adding body, not flavor or sweetness. You could try Stevia, it's not fermentable, and it's like 100 times sweeter than sugar.

    Edit: Or add salt. Masks bitterness.
    Russell Everett
    Co-Founder / Head Brewer
    Bainbridge Island Brewing
    Bainbridge Island, WA

    Comment


    • #3
      What about honey?
      Mike Eme
      Brewmaster

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by beerguy1 View Post
        What about honey?
        Exploding bottles/kegs can be bad for business.
        Timm Turrentine

        Brewerywright,
        Terminal Gravity Brewing,
        Enterprise. Oregon.

        Comment


        • #5
          Lactose doesn't taste the same as other sugars. It's sweet, but not very. Sucrose is the benchmark at "1.0" on the scale, lactose is 0.16. But it's not fermentable, so it's got that going for it. I think of lactose as adding body, not flavor or sweetness.
          Interesting info and you seemed to have hit the nail on the head! We did some taste experiments with different dosing levels of lactose and the little sweetness it did add wasn't enough to make the added body worth it IMO. We didn't have any stevia lying around, but personally I've never been a huge fan of its flavor. Might try that tomorrow though just for curiosity's sake. We did try adding a little Splenda (hate the idea of adding it to a beer...but was curious) and a little bit helped, but it didn't take much to make it taste downright awful.

          We're probably going to just let the base beer ride, but definitely learned something from this thread so thanks guys.

          Comment


          • #6
            Is there a reason you couldn't just another batch and blend the two?

            Comment


            • #7
              Sorry to raise an old thread. What are you using to add a pleasant sweetness to the finished beer if lactose is not cutting it?
              Thanks!
              D

              Comment

              Working...
              X