Lactose addition.

[kettlehead]

Maybe a stupid question but here goes, recipe on Beer Smith called for 2 pounds lactose in boil, after reviewing the brewing notes looks like only 1 lb needed. What can I expect?

 

[Wolfbayte]

Depends if you are lactose intolerant like me. If so, you can expect to have to change your shorts often.

Otherwise the 2lb batch will be sweeter than the 1lb batch. Yeast are also lactose intolerant so that sweetness does not ferment out.

 

[kettlehead]

Lol, lucky not to be lactose intolerant hopefully its not to sweet to drink. Thanks for the reply.

 

[masonsjax]

Lactose isn't terribly sweet, but you might need a fork and knife to drink this one, it's gonna have a super thick texture. Let us know how it turns out.

 

[william_shakes_beer]

FWIW i usualy put 1 LB lactose in my chocolate milk stout, always ended up with the desired affect. YMMV

 

[kettlehead]

Transferred to secondary tonight, sample tasted great texture a little thick but not bad. Only concern OG. started at 1.066 now at 1.028.

 

[Wolfbayte]

Look up on Brewers Friend how many pts 2lb of lactose adds. Also, what kind of beer did you brew? Recipe? That may be ok OG for a stout, but sounds high for a Hef.

Also, it may not be done fermenting. How long has it been going so far?

 

[kettlehead]

Its a stout and has been in primary for only 5 days. The extra lactose probably explains the higher gravity. I will plug the info into bf when I get a minute. I am sure it will drop a few points b4 bottling time. Just glad to know I didn't ruin it with the extra sugar!

 

[rneumaier]

So did you use 1 or 2 pounds of lactose?

 

[masonsjax]

He used 2# before realizing the recipe only called for 1#.

 

[kettlehead]

Recipe is from beer smith "Jens peanut butter milk chocolate stout. I left the peanut butter part out.

 

[william_shakes_beer]

So instead of a milk stout, you have a mother's milk stout

I suspect most of the calculators fail to take into account that lactose (and some other sugars) add OG but are non fermentable and therefore also increase FG. In order to be super acurate, you would add the lactose grav points to the OG, then when calculating the expected FG, deduct the GP added by the lactose, calculate attenuation and add the lactose GP back in to the FG figure.

Similarly, I don't think the calculators really account for differences in fermentability due to different mash temps. I have a spreadsheet that I use to calculate my expected OG and FG for recipie development, and it's usually identical to the online calculators. It doesn't account for lactose nonfermentability or mash temp fermentability either

 

[kettlehead]

Bottled Sunday FG 1.024 four days straight.
Tasted really good now the hard part waiting for carbonation!

 

[hotwatermusic]

Also click the lactose on your recipe, there is a box to check on beersmith to mark grains/adjuncts as unfermentable. That should give you a more accurate est. fg.