Add sugar after fermentation has started?

I've heard and read that a good way to make sure you get good attenuation for a high gravity beer that uses sugar (like a tripel) is to not add the sugar during the boil, but wait until fermentation is slowing down then add the sugar.

When you do this do you boil the sugar in a small amount of water, cool it, then pour the syrup in? Do you just dump the sugar (not boiled) right into the fermenter? Do you want to do this at high krausen or just passed it?

Thanks for the input in advance.

IMO this is really unnecessary unless you expect your beer to have an OG of over 1.110. This may depend on the ABV tolerance of your yeast.

If I were going to do it, I would definitely boil the sugar in a small amount of water and add it to the fermenter when it cooled.

That's what I've done, boiled the sugar in water and then poured into the fermenter once cooled a bit.

The idea is to give the yeast something easy to eat after consuming the malt fermentables, so I'd wait until fermentation slowed, ie not at full krausen.

I think the logic in that is the following: simple sugar like glucose are the first the yeast will eat, there is charts around that will show you the different sugars uptake of an standard fermentation, if you put to much in the boil the yeasties will become lazy and it can´t or underatenuatte or get off flavors, slowly feeding the wort with simple sugar after the first day of fermentation will help you with that. This been said, if your OG is not very very high, your mash temps are low anf give a very fermentable wort, you oxigenate and pitch the rigth amount of healthy yeast I don´t think you´ll have a problem with atenuation

Adding sugar after fermentation has begun to slow has other advantages as well. At the initial pitch the OG will be lower which means less yeast is requires. Also, the lower OG creates less osmotic pressure on the yeast.

The safest way is to boil the sugar in water, cool it and add it. Disolving the sugar in warm water may work fine as well. If you add the sugar dry it will take longer to disolve and therefore longer to ferment.

WoodlandBrew said:

Adding sugar after fermentation has begun to slow has other advantages as well. At the initial pitch the OG will be lower which means less yeast is requires. Also, the lower OG creates less osmotic pressure on the yeast.

The safest way is to boil the sugar in water, cool it and add it. Disolving the sugar in warm water may work fine as well. If you add the sugar dry it will take longer to disolve and therefore longer to ferment.

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Exactly!
Nice

Thanks for all the input. I think I'll give it a try with a Belgian tripel I am going to brew soon and see how it works out.