Barleywine Yeast Suggestions

[klickitat_jim]

@archstanton

So you are saying that alcohol does not lead to a perception of dryness?

If I make a margarita too sweet, I can dry it out by adding more tequila. No?

Kinda but you’re diluting the volume of liquid with liquid tequila in that comparison. The tequila is adding alcohol but its also reducing the total percentage of margarita mixer.

[archstanton]

@klickitat_jim

@archstanton

So you are saying that alcohol does not lead to a perception of dryness?

If I make a margarita too sweet, I can dry it out by adding more tequila. No?

Kinda but you’re diluting the volume of liquid with liquid tequila in that comparison. The tequila is adding alcohol but its also reducing the total percentage of margarita mixer.

Well I could add water but it just doesn’t have that puckering dry quality that alcohol does,. It would be watered down like some poor low abv beers, taking away sweetness but but not adding any dryness. At least that is how I perceive it, certainly not sweet a

[archstanton]

@morticaixavier

@archstanton

I have not seen anyone claim that you will ferment those leftover sugars by adding simple sugar. Merely that apparent attenuation will increase, which will increase the alcohol, which will increase the perception of dryness. FG without knowing OG is a very difficult means by which to assess how dry a beer might be. Apparent attenuation can give you a really good idea.

A pound of sugar in my example would/could increase the abv from say 6% to 7%, which I would say is significant(I’m a lightweight), and would create a different beer- drier for instance.  Hence the use of simple sugar to help “dry out a beer”.

Am I missing something here?

i don’t perceive a 7% beer with a 1.015 FG as any drier than a 6% beer with an FG of 1.015. in fact, I find higher alcohol content to taste sweeter rather than drier. I have at home a wheat wine that started at 1.104 and finished around 1.007 because of 3 lb of simple sugar. it tastes quite dry indeed but the alcohol still provides a very nice sweetness even as it evaporates off the tongue.

what we are trying to say is that a 6% beer made with all malt and a 6% beer made with malt and table sugar will have significantly different perceived dryness/sweetness. While a 6% beer and a 7% beer can taste quite difference because of the alcohol, if the extra alcohol comes from table sugar alone the perception of sweetness will not change significantly.

Adding simple sugar to a recipe is good for

a) bumping gravity and therefore ABV with minimal flavor/body change. this is the case when you simply ADD sugar to your recipe.
b) lightening body without change in ABV. this is the case when you SUBSTITUTE sugar for some of the malt as in a belgian beer.

take a belgian blonde around 6% and compare it to an american amber at about 6%. It will seem as if the belgian blonde is much lighter and dryer. More digestible as the belgians put it. while the Amber will be quite sweet and malty in comparison.

Well thanks for the response. Your wheat wine example is, well it seems you are aware that the amount of residual sugar is unknown, so the numbers start to lose meaning somewhat.

Alcohol to me is never sweet.
a) this is where we disagree, I guess I find much more than a minimal impact on body, minimal to me a a step above insignificant. The same beer 7% vs 6% is drier to me with only more sugar added.
b) no one has claimed any differently that I have come across

This is very specific to exact worts with the only difference being simple sugar was added to one and not the other.  I guess you are trying to use the alcohol % as some indicator. I guess I perceive alcohol as dry, while you perceive it as sweet. But in b above, you are changing the percentage of alcohol to residual sugar, just as you are doing in a. However only b produces the effect of “dryness”?

[klickitat_jim]

One point we are trying to make is the residual sugar I guess. Concider three recipes. A: has 10 lbs 2 row B: has 8 lbs 2 row and 1 pound cane sugar C: has 10 lbs two row, then late in fermentation a pound of cane sugar is added. All have the same mash temp, boil time, hop schedule, yeast and temp.

Compared to A, B will be dryer, C will be bigger and maybe seem drier than A but not as dry as B. A and C will have a higher final gravity than B.

[erockrph]

Maybe there’s a bit of semantics at play here on the concept of dryness. I think most of us are using the definition as “lack of sweetness” as opposed to a literal drying sensation on the palate. If you have the same amount of residual sugar in two similar beers, then the dryness level would pretty much be the same.

And I definitely agree with the statement that alcohol can leave the impression of sweetness. And I’m not the only one who thinks so: Bitter and sweet components of ethanol taste in humans - PubMed

[morticaixavier]

My point is that in an all barley beer with a og of 1.050 say and an fg of 1.010 had approximately 10 gravity points worth or residual sugar remaining. If you simply add 1 lb of take sugar to the recipe your og goes up to about 1.058 but your og stays the same. The absolute amount of ending sugar has not changed as the table sugar is effectively 100% fermentable. To my palette the additional alcohol will have minimal flavor or mouth feel impact. If, however you substitute 1lb of malt for 1lb table sugar your og stays about the same but your initial 80% apparent attenuation on the Barley portion of the wort stays the same so 42 - (42 * .8 ) = 8.2 or an fg of 1.0082. The absolute amount of residual sugar has been reduced.

On your margarita example, as Jim pointed out, you are diluting significantly a very very sweet liquid with a much much less sweet liquid. If you poured an extra shot of vodka into a pint of beer then it would seem dryer after but the amount of alcohol in a pint of beer created by an extra pounds of sugar in 5 gallons of beer is insignificant. On the perception of sweetness, it may be that you don’t get any sweetness from alcohol. I absolutely do and if I under hop a really big beer, even if it comes out with a very low fg it still tastes too sweet.

[Joe_T]

The reason higher alcohol beers taste sweeter is because they are sweeter, as in more sugar. The specific gravity of alcohol is lower than the SG of water. So a high alcohol beer with a FG of 1.010 has more sugar than a low alcohol beer with a FG of 1.010 because the alcohol of the high gravity beer is drivin the FG lower and thus takes more sugar to bring the gravity up to 1.010. And even a low alcohol beer with a FG of 1.010 has more than 10 points of residual sugar.

[klickitat_jim]

It should be noted that if a person tastes alcohol as dry rather than sweet, they are not wrong. That’s what they are tasting.

But my tongue tells me that a rum and coke is sweeter than a coke.

In any event, it was fun trying

[archstanton]

Erockrph, thanks for the link. Interesting stuff, learned something new. As it said “approximately 30% could taste sweet and/or sour”  Looks like we have a bunch of them here and they are all posting, what are the odds?

Thanks for the responses guys, I think what you are trying to tell me is: when you are talking about drying out a beer, you mean specifically and exactly that you are talking about how much apparent residual sugar is left and absolutely nothing else. If so, got it.