Experiment on sweetness of non-fermentables

[technobabble66]

I've decided to try a little DIY science at home.
I'm trying to determine if it's possible to produce sweetness in a fermented wort using standard malts or adjuncts.
The reason for this was to see if i could produce a sufficiently sweet Ginger Beer without having to resort to back-sweetening, an artificial sweetener, or pasteurisation.
After much reading, it seemed that there was a large amount of opinion and not much clear evidence to back up the claims of certain options producing some sweetness or none, or if they just altered mouthfeel. And so, i thought i'd try my hand at a trial with some small samples to get a bit of hard evidence to satisfy my curiosity.
Now i'm obviously not going to achieve a significantly sweet beer, but i just wanted a subtle sweetness to balance the bite of the ginger.

The main options presented that may provide some sweetness in the final beer were:
Maltodextrin (corn syrup used).
High temperature & short duration Mash - around 70-72°C for ~20mins.
Crystal - light to medium
Reducing the wort by boiling to produce caramelisation.
Low attenuating yeast

I just wanted to look at ingredients, as i'd use a low attenuating yeast anyway. So i didn't bother with that option.
The caramelisation process i thought i'd leave for another time, partly because i'd be tempted to try this anyway with the GB to improve the flavor of the ginger by caramelising the ginger wort.

So that left me with:
Maltodextrin
Crystal
High Mash

Also used for controls:
LDME
Dextrose plus a little LDME (provide a little nutrient for yeasts)


Batch Amount Est OG Est FG Alc%
Maltodextrin 38g + 10g LDME 1.050 1.042 1.4
Crystal 101g 1.050 1.014 5.0
High Mash 100g 1.050 1.021 4.3
LDME 47g 1.050 1.014 5.0
Dextrose 49g +5g LDME 1.050 1.000 6.8


I decided to start all samples at OG = 1.050 as that seemed the best way to create a fair comparison, given the many variables (eg: FG, alc%).
I targeted 350ml sample size - to keep cost down i used 5 x 500ml water bottles to ferment in. Also, 350ml should provide a 150-200ml drinkable sample, at least. I'm hoping this will be enough to assess the sweetness in the flavour.
_________________________________________

I started it all off yesterday. After several hours of faffing around, i had 5 x 500ml PET bottles containing 250-400ml of the samples.
Sadly the Crystal sample seemed to achieve a very poor extraction, and i had to reduce it somewhat to achieve OG = 1.050.
The High Mash sample also went slight awry - the mash started at about 73°C, but dropped to 68-69°C within 10 mins of being left wrapped up in a sleeping bag. I chucked it straight on the heat & got it back up to 72°C within 1-2 mins. I'm hoping not too much damage was done, and the basic quality of the test/sample is still OK.

I used a basic brewing yeast from a Black Rock kit tin, i think. About 0.5g in each. Should be truckloads, so i'm hoping that'll be ok.


The fermentations are rolling along nicely, 12 hrs later.
Hopefully i'll have something interesting to report in a week or 2's time!

Thoughts?

PS: how do i upload a photo into this??


Edit - fixed table & added yeast info

 

[Online Brewing Supplies]

I like the idea but much more simple to use one yeast and stop fermentation at different degrees of attenuation to achieve sweetness.
Nev

 

[technobabble66]

Agree.
But pasteurisation seems like another world of experimentation unto itself.
And if anything goes wrong with this experiment, i'm unlikely to end up with bottle bombs. SWMBO will be sooooooo unimpressed with glass shards.

Having said that, i'm keen to try the pasteurising thing, especially if none of this works. Last night I drank a GB i did a year ago with a tiny bit of stevia in it. It's ok, but i want better!

 

[Online Brewing Supplies]

I agree I hate fake sweeteners, turns me off kit ginger beers.
Pasteurization is not that difficult, hot water bath and your done.
I a keg even easier and no bombs, ever.
Nev

 

[technobabble66]

Hopefully a picture will now appear
These are the 5 samples from last night after pitching & shaking

 

[technobabble66]

Update:

Previous info + FG's:

Batch Amount Est OG Est FG Alc% Actual FG
Maltodextrin 38g + 10g LDME 1.050 1.042 1.4 1.042
Crystal 101g 1.050 1.014 5.0 1.030
High Mash 100g 1.050 1.021 4.3 1.034
LDME 47g 1.050 1.014 5.0 1.022
Dextrose 49g +5g LDME 1.050 1.000 6.8 1.000

[all OG's were as expected]

The taste tests were slightly surprising:


Batch Taste
Maltodextrin Thick mouthfeel, but watery flavour
Crystal Sweet smell, bit like toffee, but ridiculously bitter. Definitely no discernible sweetness.
High Mash More smooth malty & honey flavour. Thick mouthfeel. Slight sweetness (like sugar) at the back of the tongue.
LDME Relatively balanced flavour with a slight tartness
Dextrose Like bread cider, strong sourness & alcohol flavour

So basically, the High Mash sample was the only one that definitely seemed to produce any recognisable sweetness, with the added bonus the flavour was also the best.The sweetness was very slight however, and how noticeable this would be in a Ginger Beer, etc is hard to say. But at least it was definitely there, and had an actual (slight) sugar/honey flavour to it.

The next issue is how these flavours might compliment each other.
This starts getting much more complicated, & i'm probably not sufficiently trained to break down flavour elements well. I think the bitterness from the crystal in small proportions (like a regular batch) might help counter the tartness of the LDME/Dex; and the combination of which might produce an effect that kinda mimics/covers for sweetness to the taste perception; especially with the toffee aroma the Med Crystal induces.
For example, the combo of High Mash + Maltodex + (little) Crystal seemed to produce a decent flavour, plus a bit of sweetness.
To be honest, though, i couldn't really vouch for any of the effects of the combo's - very subjective and very minor/subtle changes to taste.
I'm not sure what impact the thicker mouthfeel has on the flavour either - whether it makes the sweetness, bitterness or sourness less accessible to the taste. (Thick being a relative term. These were just less "watery, for want of a better description).

It would also be interesting to see the impact of lighter forms of crystal - it might produce more caramel & honey aromas while reducing or eliminating the bitterness. Medium crystal by itself was a very surprising, epic failure.
It might also be smarter to test these with a better yeast. It's hard to say if the crappy kit yeast i used fermented poorly or otherwise adds confusing flavour elements. For what it's worth, these sample were fermenting ~19°C. Oh, and hopefully there were no infections to confuse things (i don't think so; no signs of infections).

One final point: i have no idea what happened to the FG's. The FG of the Crystal, High Mash & LDME all finished much higher (16, 13, & 8 points higher respectively). Poor attenuation! Obviously this itself could significantly affect the taste perception (ie: presence on unfermented sugars that should've been fermented out). However, given neither the crystal nor LDME seemed to exhibit sweetness, i'd stand by the earlier report of the High Mash sample providing real sweetness.

I hope that adds a little backyard evidence to the mix of information on non-fermentables.

Thanks to earlier posts on many other threads for providing tidbits of info - esp re: Higher Mash.

TLDR:
A short duration (~20min) plus high temperature (~72°C) mash seems to provide a tiny element of sweetness, whereas Maltodextrin, Medium Crystal & LDME (& Dex) do not appear to do so.

 

[MCHammo]

I've tried the high temp mash in a GB. I'm not convinced that it made any difference at all, except increasing the mouth feel slightly (and not really something I wanted anyway). I'm thinking the best way to do a slightly sweeter ginger beer would be to add some pear juice/sorbitol. As an experiment, if nothing else.

 

[technobabble66]

I read an earlier comment by you about the High mash doing nothing, so I was keen to be if I'd be able to taste any sweetness. Obviously these things should be tested in triplicate, & the proper test would be using it in a real GB.
I definitely could taste the sweetness, though it was also definitely quite faint at the end of the palate. Totally plausible that the GB could overshadow it.
The sorbitol thing does seem like another good option that offers real potential for adding some noticeable sweetness to a GB. Next experiment!

In reality, I'd probably use a combo of techniques - namely a High Mash plus a bit of pear juice - to try to achieve some non-fermentable sweetness.

 

[Adr_0]

I like the idea but much more simple to use one yeast and stop fermentation at different degrees of attenuation to achieve sweetness.
Nev

Wouldn't that give you Rapunzel (under-attenuated Belgian)? Sounds like technobabble bottles, so stopping fermentation - temperature, pasturisation? - might not be so simple - nor so safe - if carbonation is required at the end.

Under-attenuation =/ dextrin

technobabble, awesome experiment, much like. chuck in some CaraPils?

 

[technobabble66]

Thanks!
Yeah, Carapils or carahell might be worth trying.
I really got zero sweetness in the taste of the Crystal, though the bitterness was stunning & so it could've maybe masked any minor sweetness.

I think a good future experiment would need to look at Carapils/hell & pear juice (sorbitol).

Yes, i bottle.
I'm moderately keen to avoid bombs.

 

[TimT]

Interesting speriment!

Maybe ginger tends to be the dominant flavour in GBs anyway so sugar/sweetness doesn't necessarily have to be too strong?

One other way would be to make a very alcoholic ginger beer - ie, wort with very high malt/sugar concentration, which would ferment until the yeast hits the upper level of its alcohol tolerance, 14 per cent or so - and then dies, leaving sugar behind. Maybe they did use this method in traditional ginger beers, as apparently they were often SCOBYs, symbiotic cultures of bacteria and yeast, with the bacteria munching up the leftover alcohol.

Other brewers often use lactose in their beers to sweeten (another unfermentable sugar). I've used whey! Chuck it in the boil to kill the bacteria. It works - though the sweetness can be quite mild. Next step up from that might be actually making most/all of the wort up with whey (sounds disgusting and ridiculous). You'd probably end up making crap beers. On the bright side, you could end up with some ricotta as well!

 

[MCHammo]

I'm not convinced of the sweetening power of the lactose. I used quite a bit with no noticeable effect. Maybe it would show up in a head to head comparison, but without it, I can't taste the difference. I could always up the lactose, but I want to make ginger beer, not ginger milk.

 

[GalBrew]

Unfortunately you can't have your cake and eat it too. You either stop fermentation chemically, or use a non-fermentable sweetener like lactose or aspartame.