Back Sweetening Beer with keg?

[Duane]

So... a batch of bock turned out a lot drier than anticipated. Used a California lager (common/steam) yeast that took it down to 1.008, even at a 152 mash temp.

It's kegged right now and sitting in my kegerator. I'd like to back sweeten with some malt extract, but don't want to run the risk of "waking up" my yeast. My kegerator is set at 37 degrees.

1. Should I be concerned about "waking up" the dormant yeast?
2. If so, what are your thoughts on using campden and/or sulfites in beer?

 

[Yooper]

I think that at 37 degrees, California lager yeast is inactive or at least nearly so. I wouldn't worry about it.

I probably wouldn't use malt extract to "sweeten" a beer, unless you have done it in a glass first. Malt probably wouldn't really make the beer much sweeter, although it would increase the maltiness. For sweetening, I'd consider something like honey.

edit- I just saw the question on adding campden/sulfites to beer. I have no idea why anyone would do that, but it would probably be an effective antioxidant if you were wondering about the addition oxidizing the beer.

 

[dcbw]

I've done this with brown sugar solution before. But do a small test with a couple glasses of the beer first. Put 1tsp in the first glass, 2tsp in the second, 3tsp in the third, etc. Then taste them to determine which one hits the flavor you want. Then scale up the chosen amount to your full batch size. In my case it worked well for about two weeks and then seemed to dry out again. Keg was kept at 45F and the beer was an English bitter with 1469.

 

[Duane]

I like the way an individual glass tastes with a tablespoon of reduced wort. Balances out the hops.

The rest of the reduced wort is chilled and ready to go in the keg. I plan to wait until just before tapping the keg after several more weeks of lagering before adding the wort to avoid restarting fermentation. Thanks for the help!