Need help saving a strawberry blond

Made a strawberry blond at a big brew day. og was 1.065. a week later it was at 1.022 and i added the strawberrys. The yeast TORE UP the strawberries. very active fermentation.

BUT now that the beer is carbed up it doesn't have any sweetness, All sour. I tried using a few onces and adding some simple syrup and the did counteract the sour. But how much and of what kind of sugar do i back sweeten with? Lactose i'm guessing. 5 gallon batch.

Did you not secondary it? Next time, let it ferment out all the way then rack it to a secondary then add the berry's. 1.022 is too high and the yeast had a second little shindig that created your sour off flavors. Simple syrup will work, make sure it's sanitary. You can get brewer's glucose solids that would be appropriate. Just be careful with the sugar, maybe add more berry's to the keg or you may have a big alcoholic jolly rancher beer on your hands. Hope this helps and you save her, cheers.

I have read that Splenda is also not fermentable. Unfortunately, Splenda is about the same price as cocaine...

I would probably go for a lactose over a splenda or maby k-Meta in sucrose? . Can't imagine that "diet" taste in a beer would be good. I mostly make lagers, this is my first try with an ale. Just dropped the berries at that point based on an instruction sheet.

Gravity in the keg is still at 1.022

I added sugar to the 1.030 mark in a sample. And that was about where we want it.

Next time, stop the yeast from growing using campden tablets before adding the berries. Of course, this is only an option for those who force carb their beer with a CO2 system -- otherwise the yeast is too inhibited to carb the bottles.

Another option for the kegging set was something I experimented with last year: deeply chilling the beer, adding the berries, and keeping the beer cold until it's in the keg, carbed, and served (again, inhibiting fermentation of the fruit's sugars). Here's my write up of the (excellent) results:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/fr...rawberries-chilled-beer-avoid-dryness-172993/

so do you think repitch to dry it out some more before back sweeting?

Elfmaze said:

Made a strawberry blond at a big brew day. og was 1.065. a week later it was at 1.022 and i added the strawberrys. The yeast TORE UP the strawberries. very active fermentation.

BUT now that the beer is carbed up it doesn't have any sweetness, All sour. I tried using a few onces and adding some simple syrup and the did counteract the sour. But how much and of what kind of sugar do i back sweeten with? Lactose i'm guessing. 5 gallon batch.

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I bottled a strawberry Ginger beer about a month ago. Before bottling I had the same problem. I went with 1lb. of lactose to sweeten it up. Worked great.