Stopping fermentation pre-climax?

by putting Man Delay in the primary... OK, just kidding.


So, I've visited a couple breweries/brew pubs recently who say that a key part of their brewing is to keep some residual sugar in the beer by crashing it before it finishes primary naturally.

Who does this? Forgive if this is a newbz question.

Their opinions (both) are that if you let it ferment all the way out, it will suck. Not that I love their beers all that much, but I was wondering if this is a common practice. I personally like drier beers than malt/sugar/alcohol bombs.

Thanks.

Homebrewers who try this will end up with bottle bombs.

Trust me, those suck.

If you're kegging, you could do this in theory, but finishing too high is a lot more common in homebrewing than finishing too low. In addition, stopping a ferment early doesn't give the yeast time to reup their byproducts.

Breweries and brewpubs can get away with this because they filter their beers and serve them out of bright tanks or kegs. When they hit their target FG, its time to filter. For them, this makes a lot of sense, because its all about moving beer out the door as fast as possible.

Yeah. I believe I tasted some of those 'by-products' in the commercial beer (microbrewery which I shaunt mention). I guess I can see brew pubs doing this, but not the micro.