Ideas to rescue my Elderberry Stout

[mlcrh]

Inspired by William Bros Ebulum I'm currently making 25 litres of Elderberry Stout to serve up at my brother's wedding this September. However having tasted it yesterday it is altogether too bitter and i would welcome suggestions as to how to soften the flavour and make it a bit more palatable.
It's made with 2 tins of Coopers dark malt extract (3kg) and 6 small bottles of Biona Elderberry Juice (approx 2 litres) in the primary. I transferred that to a secondary after 10 days and added 200g of dried elderberries and left it to steep for another 14 days.
I tasted this yesterday when i was preparing to bottle the beer and found it intolerably sharp and bitter.
As it happens the secondary was a smaller volume so i had bottled 10 bottles before the steeping. This stuff has the same sharp elderberry flavour but it is much more muted and is reasonably refreshing.
I think this is a case of optimistically over elderberrying during an experiment, but can anybody suggest how it might be improved over the next 5 months?
Matthew

 

[Slid]

I did a Wherry with fresh elderberry flowers a couple of years back and over-did the elderberry quite horribly. It did tone down a bit over time. Five months might not be long enough, but it will get less bitter for sure.

 

[BeerCat]

OP used juice. Only thing i can think of is add some lactose to sweeten it up. Must of cost you some money to brew that.

 

[mlcrh]

OP used juice. Only thing i can think of is add some lactose to sweeten it up. Must of cost you some money to brew that.

Yeah probably not the most economical way to brew beer! Would lactose get eaten by yeast or not?

 

[mlcrh]

I did a Wherry with fresh elderberry flowers a couple of years back and over-did the elderberry quite horribly. It did tone down a bit over time. Five months might not be long enough, but it will get less bitter for sure.

I'm hoping time will mellow it but I'm also going to dilute it. Im about to start a second batch of stout from a Coopers kit i forgot I had lying around for a couple of years now and will be very careful to add no elderberry. When its ready i'll mix them and spread the elderberryness about a bit. It means i'm going to end up with loads of this beer and probably not enough bottles at first.
I read (possibly elsewhere on the forum) that druids would drink the elderberry beer at the winter solstice, so i'll definitely have some available for a few winter soltices to come!

 

[BeerCat]

Yeah probably not the most economical way to brew beer! Would lactose get eaten by yeast or not?

No its non fermentable. What is the gravity of the beer?

 

[Slid]

If you have the option of dilution, then obviously the more you dilute it with the new brew, the faster the elderberry will fade. So 2:1 or even 3:1 might be a ratio to try. From memory, I had at least four times too much elderberry!

 

[IainM]

Yup, I think blending and/or sweetening are your only options. Lactose will give body but not a lot of sweetness, so when it comes to blending day I would sit down and taste various ratios of the beers, lactose solution, and non-fermentable sweetener. Actually sounds quite fun!

 

[ballomar]

I've been making quite a lot of Elderberry wine. Elderberries make great drinks, but they have a lot of tannin which means that there can be a lot of harshness.

You need time. You'll read on all sorts of places on the internet that you need 6 months conditioning. I think this is too short. IME 24 months is optimal for elderberries, although 12 months is OK.

I doubt your stout will be ready for drinking by September. It should be yummy for Christmas 2019, though.

 

[mlcrh]

What i think i'll do is dilute the elderberry stout with rescue stout at a ratio and sweetness to be determined following a tasting session when the rescue stout is ready. That means i probably won't use all of the original elderberry stout and i should be able to leave a couple dozen bottles worth to age a year or so. Christmas 2019 is the gold standard if i can resist tasting. I've gone with a ludicrously high gravity on the rescue stout to bump up the alcohol content too as this is for a Scottish wedding after all!
I've actually just racked 40 litres of elderberry wine yesterday picked from the trees last autumn. It's had more than six months and i held back a couple of bottles as it's already good to drink (i did sweeten it with a splash of red grape juice). I'm going to leave most of it as long as possible to age which considering the volume i made shouldn't be too difficult.
Thanks for all your help guys

 

[mlcrh]

A chum of mine who works in a brewery suggested oaking it too. I'm worried this would create a confusing flavour profile but i do love to experiment. I've got some offcuts of oak from my dad's "pile of wood that might be useful one day" -this is actually what he calls it and it turns out he was correct! I'm excited about making my own toasted oak cubes.

 

[Simonh82]

To sweeten without lactose you could use potassium sorbate to knock out the yeast and then back sweeten with a simple sugar. You would need less of it than lactose because sucrose/dextrose is a lot sweeter but it wouldn't really add much to the body in the same way lactose does.

 

[-Bezza-]

To sweeten without lactose you could use potassium sorbate to knock out the yeast and then back sweeten with a simple sugar. You would need less of it than lactose because sucrose/dextrose is a lot sweeter but it wouldn't really add much to the body in the same way lactose does.

I was considering suggesting something similar but then thought that would cause problems in trying to re-carbonate the beer??

 

[Sadfield]

To sweeten without lactose you could use potassium sorbate to knock out the yeast and then back sweeten with a simple sugar. You would need less of it than lactose because sucrose/dextrose is a lot sweeter but it wouldn't really add much to the body in the same way lactose does.

This would rely on being able to force carbonate all packaging options though.

Sent from my E5823 using Tapatalk

 

[-Bezza-]

This would rely on being able to force carbonate all packaging options though.

Sent from my E5823 using Tapatalk

Great minds!

 

[Sadfield]

A chum of mine who works in a brewery suggested oaking it too. I'm worried this would create a confusing flavour profile but i do love to experiment. I've got some offcuts of oak from my dad's "pile of wood that might be useful one day" -this is actually what he calls it and it turns out he was correct! I'm excited about making my own toasted oak cubes.

http://www.homebrewfinds.com/2015/03/guest-post-toasting-your-own-wood-chips-by-matt-del-fiacco.html

Sent from my E5823 using Tapatalk

 

[mlcrh]

http://www.homebrewfinds.com/2015/03/guest-post-toasting-your-own-wood-chips-by-matt-del-fiacco.html

Sent from my E5823 using Tapatalk

Thanks Sadfield, I saw this article but i don't think he mentioned soaking the oak for 20 minutes - overnight to minimise burning. This seems counterproductive to me but im going to try toasting in a few ways to see what kind of results i get. I'll try and take lots of pictures

 

[Sadfield]

I didn't soak at all when I toasted these at varying temperatures (110, 160 and 215C), the only burnt bits were where I deliberately pre-scorched them on one side in a hot pan on direct heat. The one that only went in the oven were fine. First picture 110c, 160c, 215c, Scorched and 110c.

Sent from my E5823 using Tapatalk