Crazy(?) Idea to fix a too-sweet stout...

Situation:

I have 4 gallons of a stout that has been in secondary for 10 days. I taste it and it is way too sweet. Nothing "wrong", just didn't get enough bitterness in it for my tastes.

Here is my plan:

Make up 1 gallon of 1.025 Black Patent wort, cool it to room temp, then add it to my secondary (carefully, at the bottom, stirring up the yeast as I do it).

A few of the yeasties will find some new food and come back to life a little bit to process the new sugar, and I get bitterness added to my stout.

Another 10 days for the cells to finish their work, and we can bottle a hopefully much more bitter stout.

Anything wrong with this idea?

When you say "1.025 black patent wort" are you literally talking about some wort made JUST from patent?

I don't think Black Patent alone will add fermentable sugars. I could be wrong though.

Won't carbination kill some of the sweetness?

Right... that's where I was headed. Black Patent has no fermentables in it at all. It just adds color, flavor, and some gravity to the beer.

Why not just make a hop tea and add that?

add a little lactic acid

I'd worry about oxidation if you're adding it to the finished stout. I'd ferment it separately and then blend. You could pull some of the yeast cake from the finished beer with a sanitized ladle for pitching...

drat said:

I'd worry about oxidation if you're adding it to the finished stout. I'd ferment it separately and then blend. You could pull some of the yeast cake from the finished beer with a sanitized ladle for pitching...

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I would not worry about it, you are adding more wort and yeast they will use up any oxygen let in , this is done in many styles of beer, lots of belgium beers add candy sugar after the bulk fermetaion is over to start a secondry one, an most fruit beers and lambics add the fruit or more wort after the first fermentation has stoped , and this is true for barly wine and meads and other higravity brews

have you ever tasted a beer that was homebrew and thought yuck oxidation or are you just repeating what you heard

Black Patent for bitterness? Really?

Why not make a Hop Tea as mentioned earlier?

BTW, what's the OG and FG?

And you're sure it reached FG before you transferred to secondary, right?

+1 on Hop Tea

if it finished too sweet, is it possible you underpitched? If not, I'll jump on the hop tea bandwagon.

Clayton said:

I would not worry about it, you are adding more wort and yeast they will use up any oxygen let in , this is done in many styles of beer, lots of belgium beers add candy sugar after the bulk fermetaion is over to start a secondry one, an most fruit beers and lambics add the fruit or more wort after the first fermentation has stoped , and this is true for barly wine and meads and other higravity brews

have you ever tasted a beer that was homebrew and thought yuck oxidation or are you just repeating what you heard

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WTF did I write? Damn I was tired yesterday. I have had oxidized homebrew, but that was from a really stupid siphoning mishap..

I guess I was thinking that adding oxygenated wort to finished beer would cause problems, but that's just silly isn't it?

I still stand behind my blending suggestion though. Much easier to get it exactly as you want...

Here's some non-hop based alternatives:
1) Get some Cocoa Nibs and "dry nib" your stout in secondary. Cocoa Nibs add bitterness and have a nice chocolate flavor that is great in a stout.
2) Make a cold extract of freshly ground coffee beans and add that to the secondary. The bitterness of the coffee will counteract the sweetness of the malt.

I third or fourth the hop tea. Another idea is to through a couple habaneros in there (deseed them) for about three days. You won't get a spicy taste, but the slight habanero flavor might mix well with the sweetness.