Ingredients that make a beer taste sweet, when it is not

Just looking for peoples thoughts on this one.

I am drinking a BarleWine that tastes sweet, yet it has 13% abv, and an FG of 1.010.

I used Maris Otter, C60, Aromatic, Biscuit, Melanoiden, and Special B Malts.

I partial mash, and used Light LME and Cane sugar.

Do some malts just make the beer taste sweeter than they really are, such as, in this example, the Melanoiden and the Special B. Another I can think of is Honey Malt.

Crystal will do it got sure. Melanoiden too, but I taste them as different kinds of "sweet."

Remember that FG doesn't just measure how much sugar is on soloution, as alcohol is much less dense than water. A lot of grape wines taste sweet, even with gravities under 1. A 13% beer at 1.010 has a lot more sugar than a 4% beer at the same gravity. Actually, that 13% beer has more sugar than the wort that you'd use to make a 4% beer.

Yeasts also produce non-sugar compounds that taste sweet, especially glycerol. I'm also assuming that your barleywine is months old, rather than weeks; a lot of the calculated IBUs have withered away.

kingwood-kid said:

I'm also assuming that your barleywine is months old, rather than weeks; a lot of the calculated IBUs have withered away.

Click to expand...

I just looked it up, and it's 13 months old. Probably still got 50 bottles.

Remember that it's all about balance- a beer with an OG of 1.085 but only 25 IBUs will taste very sweet when finished, as opposted to a beer of the same OG but with 60 IBUs. Bittering counteracts sweetness- that's the reason hops were added in the first place (besides preservatives).

If a beer is too sweet, it's generally not over-malty, but instead under-bittered.

It's not all about balance. I've had IPAs that were both sweet and deliciously bitter -- and vapid, insipid American lagers that were neither. Some of it isn't even about taste, but aroma, as in much of the malty sweetness you get up front. Aromatic malt might contribute a lot there, even with very little residual sugar.