Creating Unfermentable Malt Syrup

[jlangfo5]

Hey guys!

I have been thinking about doing a sparkling cider, and I have been thinking, It would be nice to be able to add un-fermentable sugar to it so that you can have a sweet or semi sweet sparkling cider.

I have seen on the Graff thread on the Cider Forum where people blend wort with their cider pre-fermentation, but this is a little bit different. I want to be able to know exactly what my residual sugar will be prior to bottling. Plus, If I have a brew that falls short on it's numbers, I would like to be able to boost it up a bit.

So here is my plan:

1. Create Wort Rich with as much complex sugar as possible
2. Pitch Yeast and Ferment all the fermentable sugars possible
3. After Fermentation is done, concentrate the sugar rich beer by boiling it into a syrup
4. Add to Cider, Wine, or any other Beverage that you want sweetened without having to worry about fermentation picking back up.

My Questions:
1. If I was to mash really high, like 165F, how much fermentable sugar
would I have.
2. What measures should I take to prevent infection due to lack of hops and low ABV?
3. Any other feedback?

Cheers Guys! Would love to hear from you guys on this!

 

[orangehero]

It depends on the yeast you use in your cider. If you're using a wine yeast any kind of wort you add will ferment very little since it would be mostly maltose. I would guess it has 10-15% simple fermentable sugars. You can probably use malt extract, just search for its saccharide profile to know what you will get.

 

[BradleyBrew]

Lactose

 

[Epimetheus]

Sweet, sparking cider seems to be a real challenge. Would lactose taste neutral or give a milk-like flavor?

(I prefer not to use Xylitol because it is harmful to dogs and we have a couple. They get into stuff.)

 

[jlangfo5]

I wasn't sure if adding lactose would be the same as in terms of body and flavor of adding malt syrup. With this, I could add like a Carmel or rasin flavor depending on the kind of malt I made the syrup from.

Plus, being able to fortify thin brews with it would be nice as well, which is why I'd like to keep it around for beer as well.

Any idea what percent unfermentable sugar I would get if I mashed at 160 and used Nottingham for example? How would one even figure this out?