Sweet beer

[billbeee]

Hi all.
Glenn_M recently said,
"Alternatively you can start with the normal gravity beer and terminate fermentation early but generally end up with a sweet beer."
I have been brewing using Coopers kits for a while, and would actually like a sweeter beer, so can you give me a bit of detail on this Glenn, or anyone else?
Cheers
Bill

[Glenn_M]

Hi Bill,

I do this by using an Ale yeast for the ferment, then chilling the beer quickly when the gravity approaches what I want.

I placed the beer into a fridge set to near zero. Once the ferment has all but stopped and the wort clears, rack the beer into a new clean fermenter and put back in the fridge and let it sit a week or so.

This time is important. If you don't remove all the yeast from the wort, it may start to referment in the bottle and lead to overcarbonated beer (or potentially bottle bombs)

Most of my beer goes into kegs so this is not much of a problem for me.

If you are doing kits - try a partial mash process using some light crystal malt instead of sugar. Crystal has a high component of non fermentables in it. Steep this in some hot water and add to the kit instead of sugar. This will give you a lighter, sweeter beer but still with a lot of mouthfeel.

If you dont want a light (lite) beer then simply add more malt to the brew. If you start with a OG of 1080 or so, many yeasts will putter out around the 1035 -1040 mark and leave you with a strong but sweet beer. If you are using yeast cultures avoid belgian, barely wine, IPA, scotch ale etc yeasts etc, they will ferment much lower and juts leave you with a very strong beer.

Above all else - Experiment! That's what homebrewing is about.

Cheers,
Glenn

[bpj1968]

Bill the method described above for stopping early is really only good for kegging. If you bottle you need fermentation for carbonation in the bottle.i.e. to put eth gas in, or it will be flat. If you bottle before it is finished you will get too much gas in the bottle and BANG.

Replace the sugar/dextrose with malt dry or powder. It will leave a sweeter taste as not all the malt ferments out. repalce one for one. Try 500 grams dextrose (better than sugar) and 500 g light malt, for a start.

[billbeee]

Thanks guys,
That's given me a couple of options for experimenting.
It had crossed my mind to try a brew with say 1 1/2 tins of mix in it, but the dry malt and dextrose sound good.
Cheers
Bill

[Iain]

I was going to suggest LME and no dextrose, the type of yeast could help too, I never use the yeast that comes with the tin.
How about honey, I believe it works well, bit expensive though.