Cold-crashing with residual sugars

[Lan]

I don't have the equipment to experiment with this at the moment, but wouldn't it be possible to capture and retain much of a sugars flavor in the final beer by mashing low, then cold crashing with your sugar of choice and finally force carbonating? This would require some experimentation in order to yield a balanced brew, of course. I'm thinking about this in terms of different types of honeys and syrups which lose much of their complexity as the yeast ferment them.

 

[MalFet]

As long as you never let the beer warm up again, that should work fine. Why do you need to mash low, though? All you're doing is adding sugar late and not letting it ferment, right?

 

[Lan]

My thought is that you may want to aim for a more fermentable wort than usual since the final sugar addition could lead to an overly sweet beer. In the case of something like maple syrup, you would likely need to add to fair amount in order out bring out the flavor.

 

[MalFet]

Ah, gotcha. The low mash temp is a recipe design issue; I thought you were suggesting it would help your late sugars to stick around somehow.

In any case, I don't see a way around getting sweet beer. Even just the two points of unfermented sugar that people add at bottling time makes the beer taste very sweet until it gets converted, at least to my palette.

Perhaps you could brew a very dry beer without the late sugar, and then dose it with your addition of choice as you pour it into a glass. That way, you can tweak the recipe from beer to beer.