Can I steep crystal malts and add the "tea to already fermented and kegged beer beer?

Hi guys. I made a wheat beer with a friend a couple months ago, split a 10 gallon batch.

I chose to use C hops and Kolsh yeast instead of heffeweizen ingredients. I like a lot of things about my beer but its just a bit harsh where the tartness of wheat and the citrus of hops need some sweetness.

Would there be any drawback to steeping some crystal 20 and or 40 in 2-3 quarts water and then slowly reducing it to drive off the water? I wanted to try and add that to the keg, to taste, to see if I can save this beer.

I expect maybe a mild refermentation, so should i warm up the keg?

If you are keeping the keg at fridge temps, it won't ferment. If you raise the temp, you will get more than a mild fermentation. You would need to treat that like that like a natural carbonation and calculate the sugar accordingly.

If it's just sweetness you are looking for, you could add some lactose to the keg.

crystal malts provide no fermentable sugars IIRC...

your idea should work in theory but ive never heard of it been done

Johnnyhitch1 said:

crystal malts provide no fermentable sugars IIRC...

your idea should work in theory but ive never heard of it been done

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not true, they do indeed provide fermentables - even when only steeped (http://beertech.blogspot.com/2011/03/crystal-malt-experiment-attenuation.html). mashing them obviously provides even more fermentables.

Thank for the info guys. Sweetcell that was a great link.

So I am going to make my crystal tea with a bit of 2 row and micromash it at 154f. Then boil it and cool in my erlinmyer and pitch into my beer AFTER I warm up the keg and bleed off the carbonation. I'll give it a couple weeks at room temperature to ferment out the small amount of sugars in there and then test to see if i saved it or ruined it.

do look into adding lactose or some other non-fermentable sugar (sweetners like splenda, etc). simpler than your micro-mash... but maybe you want to go the more complicated route.

and since you're after sweetness, mash high - 158*F.

No need to warm the keg unless you want a bit of fermentation. Bring the stuff to a boil for at least 15 minutes, and you can dump that straight into the keg. I've done it with a beer tea to get more spice into a Belgian with no ill effects.

Give it a little shake after sealing it back up, let it sit and you're good to go.

billl said:

If you are keeping the keg at fridge temps, it won't ferment. If you raise the temp, you will get more than a mild fermentation. You would need to treat that like that like a natural carbonation and calculate the sugar accordingly.

Click to expand...

True, but if it's in a keg it would be easy enough to vent the excess CO2 and then re-force-carb to the desired volume.