Sweet beer

I have a questions about sweetness. I have added either Candi sugar or DME to a couple of batches and have ended up with somewhat sweet beer. This last one I added extra hops to counter the sugar.

My question is at bottling time what would happen if i use less prming sugar for carboniztion? Can I use less and still achive full carb?

That's a dangerous game. If you have too much sugar in there, you'll get bottle grenades.

Why isn't the DME and candi sugar fermenting out completely? Are these particularly high gravity beers? What's the yeast strain? Both of those sugars should ferment out pretty dry (especially the sugar). Generally, residual sweetness comes from unfermentable sugars contributed by ingredients like Crystal malts. Are you sure the sweetness isn't coming from something other than what you guess?

well I don't know. Here's what I have

9.3 lbs LME
3/4 lb Crystal 35L
1 OZ Perle hops
.5 oz Czech Saaz Hops
1 oz Fuggle Hops
1lb Belgian Candi sugar
White Labs California Al # WLP 001

I added the Candi sugar and the fuggle hops on my own.

personal opinion: you have an imbalance in malt vs bittering hops.

9.3 lbs of LME makes a HEAVY beer, so it's going to be perceived as sweet unless it is balanced with some nice bitter alpha acids. I don't think a single ounce of perle for bittering will cut the mustard.

Plus, with that high of a SG, your yeast might be having a hell of a time fermenting it completely.

-walker

Hmm...so, how sweet is it? The Califonia Ale strain should be able to ferment that recipe fairly dry. I would think the sweetness is because of the Crystal and residual sugars in the DME. Though that is a fair amount of malt and sugar...pretty big beer.

35L Crystal has a definite sweetness...slightly carmelly. Is your sweetness a malty quality or does it taste like candi sugar (sucrose or table sugar)?

PS - I like Walker's thinking on the subject, too. Not much hops for that much malt.

It's more like too much table sugar. What is a good bittering hops to use when doin this kind of thing?

Hmm...if it tastes like table sugar, then it does seem that attenuation may be your problem.

Some dry yeasts will ferment seemingly ANYTHING. Maybe want to try one of them. Or try the White Labs California Ale V. It seems to ferment more fully in bigger beers.

Another option is to leave out the candi sugar, since your beer will already be pretty strong and all candi sugar does is add alcohol with little to no flavor.

My current guess is that it's a combination of the high gravity of the beer and the yeast's inability to finish it combined with the fact that candi sugar is just sucrose, no different from table sugar. Sucrose is a complex sugar and must first be broken into simple sugars before fermenting. If the yeast is already wekened by the high alcohol content, it may not be able to ferment sucrose like it would invert sugar or corn sugar.

When did you add the candi sugar?

To get back to your original question...if the hunch that the yeast can't finish the beer is right, then it doesn't matter whether you add sugar at bottling time or not because the yeast can't ferment any further. That may not be true in that it may be able to ferment a bit of corn sugar, but not the sucrose.

In any event, the real issue here is to get your beer to ferment completely. Until you get that happening, bottling is a very dangerous thing. If you're going to brew high gravity beers, you need to focus more heavily on things like aeration, a large, vigorous yeast starter, fermentation temperature, and whether your yeast strain attenuates adequately. Also, I would add the candi sugar to the boil so that the yeast can work on it early in the fermentation.

Hops aren't going to solve this. You don't want a bunch of unfermented sugar in your beer anyway, so covering it with hops is probably not the right approach. I'd try California V next time, make a big starter, aerate the heck out of your wort and keep the fermentation temp in the 70s.