Estimating residual sugars in a beer recipe

Question

I'm finally taking a stab at formulating my own beer recipe. What I'd like to achieve is something dark and chewy, but not overly sweet.

I've been playing around with the recipe tools on brewersfriend, estimating OG / FG / ABV / IBU / SRM from a recipe. Are there similar tools for estimating perceived post-fermentation sweetness from a recipe? For that matter, does a "sweetness" measurement scale exist?

Or am I overthinking this - and what I'm after is just FG?

Thanks for any pointers (and recipe formulation strategies are most welcome!)

Answer 1

There is no way to know residual sweetness, lots of things change the perceptible sweetness.....ABV, non-fermentables, hop choice, yeast choice, boil time....etc...

To give an example...I made an old ale, only using marris otter....F.G 1.008 S.G 1.076.....it turned out super sweet, due to the long boil time, lots of caramel and prune flavors, and very thick.

Knowing your ingredients is the best way to design a recipe.

Use the KISS principle when creating your first few recipes, start with a base malt, and add single hop and a single adjunct or specialty grain. get an idea what it adds. then change it up or add on top another ingredient next time.

slowly build it up, change one thing at a time till you have the knowledge or a good idea what things add to the beer.

But to help with something chewy dark and semi sweet, look for stout or porter recipes with higher F.G. good amount of caramel/crystal malts, or long boil times, over 1.5 hrs.