Maltodextrin addition

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flabyboy

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I am in need of a little advice. I recently made a pumpkin ale that seems to gave fermented out pretty dry at 1.005. It's an All Grain batch. Is there anyway to add a little body to the beer after fermentation? The guy at Northern Brewer recommended boiling up a half lb of Maltodextrin in water and adding it to the primary. Anybody else here have experience doing this? Did it add any off flavors? More importantly, did it improve the beer?
 
Maltodextrin doesn't add flavor,just more mouth feel. It's usually added at flame out. But,I guess you could add 8oz to 2C of boiled water & dump it in. It won't take away the dryness,just gives more body (mouth feel).
 
unionrdr said:
Maltodextrin doesn't add flavor,just more mouth feel. It's usually added at flame out. But,I guess you could add 8oz to 2C of boiled water & dump it in. It won't take away the dryness,just gives more body (mouth feel).

Would adding lactose and malto give it a little more sweetness. 4 oz of each be reasonable?
 
If you want body + sweetness, add Lactose, perhaps 8oz. Dextrin adds no sweetness, just body. Boil with water for 5min, cool and add to your beer in primary.
Just for reference, I did a tasting test some time ago between table sugar, dextrin and lactose.
I added same amount (volume) of each to a certain amount of water. I assumed table sugar as the maximum sweetness possible (score 100) and pure water as no sweetness at all (score zero).
Table sugar score=100
Lactose score=20
Dextrin score=2

Gravity wise, Lactose shown to provide 45ppg while dextrin 47ppg. 8oz of lactose in a 5gal batch would bring your FG to about 1.010
 
Thanks for all you help. Any reason to add it to primary vs a secondary? Do I need to stir it in or just pour it in and leave it?
 
Thanks for all you help. Any reason to add it to primary vs a secondary? Do I need to stir it in or just pour it in and leave it?

If you are doing a secondary, you can add there too, just dump in there. I think you could even add while botling/kegging.
 
There are different grades of maltodextrin so it can be up to 20% fermentable but the kind sold by HBS is probably DE10 which would be only 10% fermentable.
 
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