Brewing with Stevia

[Juiceyfruit152]

Hello all,

I've made alot brews primary Ale's and a few lagers. Typically, I stay away from the sweet stuff unless it's a milk stout. My wife has taken a like liken to Summer shandy (yuck). I have talked to a few local craft brew shops about making a shandy at home and the consensus is if it's not kegged or using lemonade powder it's out of the question. I don't have the space for a kegerator and I think it's blasphemy to use artificial flavors in a beer. I have looked into stevia which is a natural sweetener that's not fermentable. I have made lemon honey Weiss in the past. Would it be possible to make a Weiss base (3-4 gallons) and 1 gallon of stevia lemonade and mix in a secondary carboy? Let me know.

 

[NGD]

I can't answer your question directly, but I would make sure that your wife doesn't mind the taste. I use it a fair amount for various things and have found some people really have an issue with the taste. Also make sure your getting pure stevia and not stevia cut with erythritol or some other sugar alcohol.

This sounds like an interesting concept and I'm not sure why it wouldn't work. I'd like to see if any of the other brewers on here have tried messing around with stevia.

 

[parrothead64]

I never brewed with Stevia , but what if you brewed a lager or a blonde ale with a late addition of lemon drop hops, and mixed it with lemonade when you are going to drink it.

 

[Juiceyfruit152]

I have thought of using lemon drop hops but typically I use lemon oeel to get the true lemon flavor. I would like to use stevia because I can get the sweetness without carbonating the beer. I have liked at stevia Leeves because the flavor can be overwhelming and or off flavors. I also wanted to go with an all in one setup rather than the traditional mixing after the beer has finished conditioning.

 

[Manoau2002]

I made lemonade a couple years ago. I just used real lemon and sugar and bakers yeast. At the bottling stage I used Stivia to back sweeten. The sweetness level was really good. The lemonade did have a funky taste however - I think it had to do with how the real lemon fermented and I didn't do a secondary so it sat on the dead yeast for months in the bottle. I should try this again sometime.