Back sweetening beer

[johnsonbrew]

I have read some articles and posts about back sweetening beer, but have not really found what I need. I attempted to make an Orange/Citrus Cream ale (not like an orangcicle just for clarification) just a sweeter, orange flavor cream ale. It turned out dry, I got busy and forgot to suspend fermentation. It finished at 1.010 and started at 1.054. for an abv of around 5.7%. Not exactly what I was looking for. I would like to sweeten it up a bit and if possible, add a bit of orange flavoring to it since the sweetened orange peel really has not come through. It is possible to add a sweeter orange flavor to this beer. It is kegged but not carbonated yet. I thought I might throw this out there and see if there were any suggestions to get this closer to what I was trying to make.

Thanks!

 

[RM-MN]

Often you'll find crushed coriander in a beer that has orange peel. The coriander lends more orange flavor than the orange peel does. You would not normally stop fermentation to end up with a sweet beer but since you are kegging that could work but since you missed your opportunity for that on this batch you have a couple choices to add sweetness. First it that you could heat up that keg of beer until all the yeast is killed, then add sugar before cooling and carbonating. Second is to add a sweetner that cannot ferment.

 

[WileECoyote]

Hello, You can boil a small amount of Lactose Sugar and add that right into the keg to back sweeten the beer, it will sweeten it up, but I really don't think its going to be the kind of sweet your looking for, unless you use a very small amount to just give a hint of sweetness.

I have been experimenting, flavoring beers using store bought items instead of dried peels and seeds from the brew shops, turns out I really like the flavor of fresh squeezed lemon juice added to the boil with 1 min left, its way better sweet smooth lemon flavor (like lemon aid) than cracked coriander seeds, dried lemon peels or lemon peel zest.

We just tried a orange honey hefe with orange peel zest, and it has that same slightly sour bite as the lemon zest, dried peels, coriander did, I think should have gone with adding the juice from the orange to the boil, next batch !

I know you really weren't asking about flavoring your beer, but I just thought I'd toss it out there, and the juice seems to have a sweeter flavor to it.

Cheers

 

[BigFloyd]

Since you're kegging, just hit it with potassium sorbate (0.5 tsp per gallon) prior to adding the sweet stuff. I do that with cider (using ale yeast) and it works fine.

It helps if you've cold crashed the primary well (like a week in the mid-30's) prior to kegging so that you don't have a bunch of excess yeast hanging out in there.