Lactose post fermentation?

[suffolkbeer]

Looking for some advice...

I’m tinkering with a milk stout recipe and I’ve recently had difficulty getting beer with lactose to ferment as I’d like.

If I brew a milk stout but leave out the lactose (instead of chucking it in the boil). I could then allow the beer to ferment as a normal stout and add lactose after fermentation?

I would boil lactose with a little water in a pan and the add to the fermenter....

Anyone see any issues with doing it this way?

 

[The Baron]

I have done this to sweeten fruit beers after fermentation and prior to bottling worked fine for me also you can sweeten to taste and just add until correct sweetness attained

 

[suffolkbeer]

Thanks for that!

 

[ACBEV]

In the past some breweries who sold milk/sweet stout would add lactose at racking. (bottling) to there normal stout.

Obviously, this means you could split a batch of stout between dry or oatmeal stout and sweet stout.

 

[ACBEV]

To add....

Some breweries didn't add lactose for sweetness, they relied on high mash temp. and low attenuation.

 

[suffolkbeer]

Thanks again!

 

[Hoddy]

To be honest I'm more confused by you saying that you've had issues with beers to ferment out as you had planned???

What do you mean?

Lactose is unfermentable so what did you expect to happen to your beer?

I wouldn't recommend adding lactose later to your beer as your introducing no end of variables and risks to your end beer.

Understanding what your trying to achieve and solving that in the brewing process will give you a far better and more predictable and stable beer.

 

[suffolkbeer]

So it’s not really a brief explanation but.......

I use brewers friend software to plan my recipes. Through this and using the mikkeller book I formulated a milk stout recipe. I had it stall on me twice at 1.030, the bf software had predicted an FG of 1.020.
I was advised that the level of lactose in the recipe was probably caused by the yeast to stall early.
I then tried a completely different milk stout recipe and had a much better result, it did however still finish a couple of pints above the predicted FG.

I was therefore asking if it might be simpler for me to ferment a stout normally and add lactose post fermentation. This would take out and variables that may stop the yeast early. By doing it in the way I describe in my OP it would probably also not greatly Rick infection.

That’s really the reason I asked the question in the OP in the way I did.

 

[Hoddy]

Ok so I am assuming your brewing an AG beer here?

What was the gram per litre of lactose to wort? And what was the total batch size?

And out of interest what was the yeast you were using?

I don't think lactose could cause yeast to "stall" more another factor would cause such a thing. Unless it was massively over used.

 

[Leon103]

So it’s not really a brief explanation but.......

I use brewers friend software to plan my recipes. Through this and using the mikkeller book I formulated a milk stout recipe. I had it stall on me twice at 1.030, the bf software had predicted an FG of 1.020.
I was advised that the level of lactose in the recipe was probably caused by the yeast to stall early.
I then tried a completely different milk stout recipe and had a much better result, it did however still finish a couple of pints above the predicted FG.

I was therefore asking if it might be simpler for me to ferment a stout normally and add lactose post fermentation. This would take out and variables that may stop the yeast early. By doing it in the way I describe in my OP it would probably also not greatly Rick infection.

That’s really the reason I asked the question in the OP in the way I did.

It's expected to finish high. Because of using fermentavle sugars you are using lactose.
I have brewed the same recipe and mine stopped at 1.028. I guess brewers friend is wrong and not the beer.

 

[stz]

Personally I like to add it to the boil to help mix it in and sanitise, but you'll get away with using a little less adding to fermenter or even more on packaging due to the lack of losses at these stages though it is fairly cheap. I don't like adding it at any point where mixing it in will disturb or oxygenate the beer though I can understand not adding it to the boil especially first time out with a recipe. Build your recipe as normal, ignoring any contribution from the lactose. Define SG and PG. Say 1.055 - 1.015, do what you need to do to get that. Take a sample for a gravity as the boil finishes to make sure you've hit SG, make your lactose addition straight to copper, or make up a slurry with a jug of wort and add to copper or fermenter, collect wort atop it to mix it in. You just need to work out how many points of lactose you've added, take a second read and then ignore those points (unfermentable) in your calculations. Say you've added 8 points, your gravity would be 1.063 - 1.023 and would be as if it was 1.055 - 1.015. Don't know if your software is smart enough to consider the extract yield from lactose to be unfermentable. From memory it is 350LoD? This means 1kg/1L will give 1.350. If you want 8 points in 20L that'd be 457g. (8*20 = 160 / 350)

 

[BeerCat]

I recently added some to a barley wine. Was a pain to mix.