I was recently chatting with a local breweries owner/brewer and we were discussing flavoring in beer. Specifically flavors like marshmallow and honey that are pure fermentable sugar.
He told me the ideal way is post fermentation flavoring. Essentially mixing all the flavors together and adding them after fermentation is complete.
Has anyone tried this?
Would it essentially be in the cold crashing stage?
Or would it more be adding those in place of the carving sugars?
I’d love to try it but don’t want to risk the bottle bombs. Any advice would be welcomed and loved.
Adding them after the primary fermentation is complete would, most likely, preserve more of the subtle flavors. Doing so would also restart fermentation so I would wait to bottle until the new sugars were consumed by the yeast.
The flavors of honey are difficult to keep in your beer. If boiled they volatilize out. Added during the primary fermentation they can get carried out with the CO2.
Honey can be used as carbing sugar. Marshmallow? I have no idea how that would work. I vaguely remember an article in Zymurgy or BYO recently on different sugars for carbing.
Yes. And not real vanilla either but rather the “fake” Mexican vanilla, which smells and tastes particularly marshmallowy.
For honey, you’re best off using a combination of real honey and also Canadian Gambrinus Honey Malt as part of the grist, say about 5% of the total grist, or even a tad more if you want it stronger.