Adding a sweet liqueur to homebrew

I'm considering adding a shot of Disaronno to my homebrew for an amaretto flavoring, but I'm worried about how it will affect the fermentation process. I'm not familiar with the yeasts used in liquor and liqueurs, and don't know much about the types of sugars that they consume. Does anyone know if there are sugars that are unfermentable to the yeasts used in a liqueur that would be fermented by beer yeast strands? I don't want to add the Disaronno to the secondary, add priming sugar and overshoot my CO2 target.

 

I don't know the answers to the specific questions you asked.

I am curious, though, why not brew the beer as you normally would and just pour the Disaronno into your beer glass just before you're ready to drink it?

 

Because it is already a distilled alcohol I am going to make the assumption that there should be no fermentable sugars in the product so with that assumption you can simply add the desired amount at bottling time as you rack onto the priming sugar with out concern for additional fermentation occurring above the measured priming sugar.

Denny's Bourbon Vanilla Porter recipe does this with bourbon and it's delicious! I've nver had any issues with this process but I've never used Disaronno either.

 

I'm not entirely sure that's always a valid assumption.

In some cases at least, I think the alcohol is distilled and than other flavor adjuncts are added later. If this is the case, the distiller can add all the fermentable sugars he/she wants as there are no yeast left as none could survive the distillation process.

If you then introduce these fermentable sugars into a brew with live, active yeast, I could see the potential for these sugars to ferment.

I'm not nor have I ever been a distiller, nor do I pretend to know much about the process, but I do know that certain varieties of schnapps are made this way, with sugars being added after distillation.

How much of this sugar might be present in the alcohol you're thinking of using I haven't a clue.

Edit: Maybe you could try adding the Disaranno to secondary and then wait a bit before bottling? In the off chance this does kick off a round of fermentation, you can let it run its course and then bottle with confidence.

Sorry I don't know enough about Disaranno to be able to be of more help.

 

Thant's why I prefaced my response with emphasizing my assumption so as not to completely steer the OP in the wrong direction if I am not correct Like you, I am not that familiar at all with the product.

I like your idea about the use of secondary in case my assumption is wrong

 

http://m.drinksmixer.com/desc154.html
I don't think there's enough in 1 shot to over carbonate a 5 gallon batch but now I gave you a starting point!

 

Thanks everyone for your input. I'm going to just give it a shot and see how it turns out. I'll update in a few weeks.