How to increase sweetness.

I recently made a strawberry beer. It is very good with a light strawberry flavor. However I was shooting for a much sweeter beer. I've had some very sweet beers, like the St.Louis Framboise, and the Bush-Inbev wild black, wild red etc. How do I increase the sweetness to those levels. I'm doing extracts and bottlling.

Sweetness comes from many sources, but basically unfermented sugars, or less hops, or a different yeast. One way is to use specialty grains that provide complex sugars that the yeast cannot digest. Another way is to use a different yeast ( like ale yeast) that creates a sweeter profile. Or add lots of sugar, more than the yeast can ferment. Or just use less hops.

It also depends on the combination of ingredients, so for a more definite answer, post your recipe and let the forum look at it.

Or add some artificial sweetner, like aspartame, which can be found in a few examples of commercial lambics and fruit beers.

SMc0724 said:

Or add lots of sugar, more than the yeast can ferment. Or just use less hops.

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By the time you get to that point, your beer will be very dry and probably have a hot alcohol taste. Yeast can keep going beyond the normal 5% ABV beer. You could add some Caramel/Crystal malts that are in between 10L and 60L. You'll get sweetness from the darker ones, but they start to have more complex flavors. Keep in mind that you'll change the profile of the beer as you do this. Do some research on the style of beer you are brewing. Find some award winning recipes and examples and learn how they used malts to make the beers a bit sweeter.

You can add lactose- an unfermentable sugar (milk sugar). It's often used in sweet stouts and in fruit beers where you want some sweetness.

ludomonster said:

Yeast can keep going beyond the normal 5% ABV beer.

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Agreed, just adding fermentable sugar may not get the desired result of sweetness.

ludomonster said:

Find some award winning recipes and examples and learn how they used malts to make the beers a bit sweeter.

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+1 to that.