Milk stout too sweet, any ideas on how to fix/change a bit?

[Gibbo411]

Hello fellow Brewers, this is my first post here (long time reader) and I have a question for y'all.
I have recently brewed my first milk stout (coopers stout kit) and believe I have added too much lactose, I did intend for it to be sweeter than usual but I went overboard with the sweetness. It is still drinkable, more so as a dessert beer but I was wondering if anyone had an idea of how to put some bitterness/dynamic flavours into it now that it is kegged and carbonated. I was thinking I could dry hop for a few days with some fuggles or something?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

 

[manticle]

Are you sure it's lactose and not unfermented maltose or priming sugar?

If bottled, you could blend in the glass with another stout or make a black n tan.

If still in the fermenter, wait then blend with a more bitter stout or boil up some hops and dme for 30+minutes and add.

Just read kegged so you can add the extras (gently) to the keg.

 

[MHB]

How much Lactose did you add?
Was it a standard batch 23L give or take
Did you take OG and FG readings
Generally if you want help it's really good to supply this sort of information. If you haven't taken an FG just run some out of the tap, let it warm to ambient and take a reading on that, and tell us what you put in from there its pretty easy to work out if its underfermented wort or Lactose that you are tasting.
Mark

 

[Gibbo411]

20L batch
FG 1.019 which was bang on the mark from the kits & extract spreadsheet. I used 750g of lactose

 

[klangers]

That's a lot of lactose.

As Manticle suggests, you can either:

• Make a hop tea by boiling then straining some hops - get additional bitterness
• Brew another batch without lactose and blend

 

[Feldon]

You can subdue the possibility of excessive sweetness in a milk stout by adding a quarter cup of human urine immediately after pitching yeast (early morning mid-stream sample is best).

Well, midday has now passed and no takers apparently for my attempt to take the piss, so to speak, on April Fools' Day.

Carry on.

Oh, and :icon_offtopic:

 

[Gibbo411]

Hahaha that's a good one Felton.

I have just read elsewhere that adding some cold brewed coffee and a bit of aging might help out the situation. So I will give that a go and see how it turns out.

I've learnt from this ordeal not to get too excited with the unfermentable sugars/adjuncts.

 

[MHB]

Ok, of your residual the lactose is contributing 0.014 which means that without the lactose it would have been 1.005.
I'm a bit suspicious of the numbers but they are close enough to show there isn't too much unfermented wort and that as you thought the sweetness was from too much lactose.

One of the suggestions above should see you clear, personally I would just park it until the middle of winter, with a couple of months in the keg it would be great on a cold night.
Mark

 

[Gibbo411]

Shit that is suspicious, maybe I screwed up somewhere. Which is probably the case