potassium sorbate question

I was wondering whether potassium sorbate by itself is strong enough to prevent fermentation. The reason I ask is that I recently brewed a nut brown that I added toffee torani syrup to. When I found out that the syrup had potassium sorbate in it, I figured I'd just keg it instead of bottling like I planned. This worked fine and it turned out to be very tasty.

I was just wondering whether the sorbate in these syrups is enough to prevent them from being eaten? I'd love to be able to use them to reliably backsweeten, since they come in about every imaginable flavor. I don't think that the yeast ate the sugar in the syrup, but I am not positive.

I don't know, but I doubt it. The sorbate will work as a preservative while the flavoring is in the bottle, but probably not as a presevative on an entire batch of beer.

Sorbate doesn't kill yeast- it stops it from reproducing. So, if you've still got yeast in the beer, it doesn't even need to reproduce to continue fermentation.

Keeping it cold should inhibit the yeast far more than any sorbate would.

What about adding Potasium sorbate to prevent oxidation at bottling?

malagabeer said:

What about adding Potasium sorbate to prevent oxidation at bottling?

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Potassium metabisulifite is commonly used in that application in winemaking.