Ways to create a sweet beer

Hi Guys,
My preference is for dry beer, but my gal was enjoying a floris kriek the other day, and I became curious as to how it got SO sweet.

To my understanding, sweetness can be increased with:

-certain malts, such as crystal/caramel malts (bring a caramelly sweetness)
-warmer mash (results in a complex, malty sweetness)
-using a lower-attenuating yeast (examples?)
-creating very high-gravity wort ('maxing out' the yeast... results in high alcohol beer)
-addition of unfermentable sugar after the fact (lactose mainly... also sucralose or aspartame maybe?)

Are there other methods?

The floris is only 3.5% alcohol, and the sweetness was not malty, caramelly, or funky. The ingredients list does not mention lactose, but does mention cherry juice as 30% of the volume. I wondered if perhaps they killed or filtered the yeast somehow, then added the juice before force carbing and bottling?

Any thoughts?

Adding lactose or splenda are the only ways I've heard of.

mrkeeg said:

I wondered if perhaps they killed or filtered the yeast somehow, then added the juice before force carbing and bottling?

Click to expand...

This is how the sweet fruit "lambics" are made.

Lactose gives you a milk sweetness, if they used cherry juice and it is sweet, likely the juice was added after fermentation was complete.

I've been looking for some clarification on one of these methods. I've heard that mashing high actually does not result in a sweeter beer. Yes, it results in a beer with a higher FG, but does our tongue perceive higher chain sugars as sweet?

remilard said:

This is how the sweet fruit "lambics" are made.

Click to expand...

Thanks... so... what's the best way to do this? Can I remove enough yeast with finings and cold crashing? I can't imagine using metabisulfates like they do in wine... (yuck? ... or ... maybe it would work?) I suppose pasturization would work... but would have an effect on taste. What about using a home wine plate filter with the finest pads?

Thanks again!

Killing with Metabisulfates or filtering can work. (otherwise the yeast will have their way with the sugars)

Or,
You could add syrups at drinking time like in a Berliner Weisse. You also could make a Berliner Weisse to do this with. My wife is a sweet stuff only type. She only drinks the Lindemans Fruit Lambics and Berliner Weisse with syrup.

Anybody have experience doing this with metabisulfates? What was the effect of taste?

I think I might try it with fining, cold crashing and racking.

*bump* no input on using metabisulfates or other chemicals? Not sure that's what I'm looking for... but also.. this beer is NOT clearing with gelatin and cold crash.

Metabisulfates are standard for wines. I doubt they'd be a problem with beer.

To my understanding, the sulfates aren't as noticed in beer because some sulfur compounds are naturally produced/occurring in the wine anyway.

I guess I was wondering/worried if the met would cause some off-flavours.