How to get a sweeter, more full-bodied beer

After reviewing the judges' feedback from my homebrewing competition entries earlier this year, and combining it with my own observations, it's clear that for some styles I am not quite hitting my target for mouthfeel and (where appropriate) sweetness.

I did some research into how you can improve these qualities in your homebrew, and have uncovered the following variables which can be altered during brewing to give a beer more body and/or sweetness:

Add unfermentable sugars: This can be done with sugars like lactose, which yeast won't ferment. This will add a sweetness to a beer like a milk stout. I've done this in the Stout Chocula beer I brewed earlier this year to good effect. However, I don't see lactose working well in a Belgian beer.
Add Calcium Chloride: This can reportedly enhance the maltiness of a beer. This is something I haven't tried, but will tinker with in the future.
Increase Caramel Malt: Increasing the amount of caramel (a.k.a. Crystal) malt in a beer can increase residual sweetness, though if you go beyond 1-2 pounds in a 5-gallon batch you can oversweeten the beer. I've done a little of this, but could probably do more.
Change the yeast strain: Switching to a comparable but less-attenuative yeast strain can result in more residual sugar in the beer, leading to additional sweetness and body. This is something I have considered but haven't tried yet.
Boil longer: A longer boil generates more of a Maillard reaction in the beer and will increase the bready, toasty flavor of the beer. A very intense boil will produce sweeter caramel flavors. I will look into this for future beers.
Mash at a higher temperature: Mashing in the 152-160F range will result in more long-chain sugars in the beer that yeast cannot ferment. This will increase body and residual sweetness. I've played with this a bit, but have not yet seen significant results from it. I may need to combine the technique with others above, such as increasing caramel malt amounts and adding calcium chloride.

While most of my beers have turned out fine, my "bigger" Belgian beers and my Scottish ale both tend to ferment a little dry and thin for my taste (and the judges' also). I'm hoping that leveraging this information will get me a better beer in the future.

Comments

Yellow Label Angel Yeast vs. Typical Brewing Yeast

I currently have my second batch of rice wine fermenting with the "magical" yellow-label Angel Yeast from China, and wanted to share some of the more unusual aspects of using it. If you've never seen or used this yeast, I suspect you're not alone. It ships in a 500 gram package that looks like this: What makes it "yellow label" is that yellow box you see in the upper left corner of the package. This implies that it's yeast for distilling (though you do not need to have a still or distill the output to use it). As I understand it, inside the package is a mix of yeast and other materials which will convert starch into sugar and directly ferment it, without the need for a traditional mash step. This can radically shorten your brewing time. For my most-recent batch of rice wine, I heated 3 gallons of water to 155F, poured it over 13+ pounds of uncooked rice straight out of the bag, let that soak for an hour, rehydrated some of this yeast in warm water,

2021 Batch 1 - Rice Wine made with Yellow Label Angel Yeast

I've become a big fan of the Still It channel on YouTube. About a month ago, Jesse posted a video about how he made rice wine using nothing more than water, rice, and a purported "magic" yeast from China called Yellow Label Angel Yeast. Perhaps even more amazing was the fact that he was able to make the rice wine without gelatinizing or mashing the rice. He shows three batches in the video. One was made by cooking the rice before adding the yeast mixture. Another was made by adding uncooked rice to boiling water. The last was made by adding uncooked rice to room temperature water. All three fermented out to roughly the same amount of alcohol in about two weeks. He was amazed by this, as was I. I resolved to buy some of this magical yeast from Aliexpress.com and try it out. In the Still It video, the rice is ground up in the grain mill into smaller chunks to make it easier for the enzymes in the yellow label yeast to convert and ferment. I'm changing this up s

Making Alton Brown's Immersion Cooker Fennel Cardamon Cordial

Alton Brown's "Good Eats" series is my favorite cooking show. I love the way he explains the "why" and "how" of a recipe in detail, which helps you understand (if things don't go right) where you may have gone wrong. In his episode on immersion cooking (also known as sous vide), he shows you how to make a cordial in an hour using an immersion cooker. It took me a while to locate all the ingredients here in Columbus. I ended up getting the fennel and vodka at Giant Eagle. The cardamom seeds, pods, and anise stars came from Amazon. The Fennel fronds and bulb came from Trader Joe's at Easton. Ingredients 32 ounces of 80-proof vodka 2 cups of fennel fronds 10 green cardamom pods 3 ounces granulated sugar 1 tablespoon fennel seeds 1 teaspoon black cardamom seeds 1 whole star anise Begin by loading your sous vide vessel with hot water and set your immersion cooker to 140F. While the cooker is getting up to that temperature, meas

Begin Brewing!

Search This Blog