Imperial Stout Fix

[I.P.EH]

Hey guys. I was wondering if anyone has had experience with making an overly sweet stout. I brewed an 8 % Imperial Stout 2 months ago and it sat on vanilla beans in the secondary. I just kegged it this week and the beer has too much residual sweetness for my taste. I'm thinking about adding a cup of cold pressed coffee to balance it out. Does anyone have any other ideas ?
Cheers

[jtmwhyte]

what was the FG? Mash Temp? How long on the yeast?

[I.P.EH]

The FG was 1.030 which was on the high side but I added lactose during the boil. The mash temp was 67 deg. It was in the primary for 3 weeks. My problem was the combination of lactose and vanilla beans being overwhelming. It is a chili stout so I tried to balance it with moderate sweetness

[Hobbitfu]

How much lactose did you add? And what size batch?

[CorneliusAlphonse]

you could try adding a bit of coffee to a glass, then topping off with RIS. you'd get a sense for how it affected the taste, what amount you might want to add, etc.

[I.P.EH]

Thanks. I think that will work. That way i can figure out how much to add to the keg without going too far with the coffee.

[Celiacbrew]

As a last resort you could add lactase to it and then krausen it.

[Broob]

A bigger beer like that you may be able to water it down a bit. I watered down a porter that didn't finish far enough and it tasted great. It will obviously thin it out a bit but beats having it too sweet. Same idea as the coffee. Get a few glasses and add various amounts of water to them and taste to see which volume works the best. Not hard to scale up to a full batch.

[gm-]

You could always make a low abv dry stout and mix the two.

[I.P.EH]

Yeah watering it down might work for me too thanks

[jason.loxton]

The vanilla will have the effect of making the stout taste sweeter than it actually is (you interpret vanilla and fruit flavours as sweet). Vanilla will fade markedly with time, so letting it sit will be a partial fix on its own.

The suggestions people have are good. I'd be tempted to blend a second batch.

As an aside, how is the vanilla, coffee, jalapeno combination. To be honest, it sounds super gross, but so does a peanut butter and banana sandwich as a concept...

[I.P.EH]

Its good to know that the vanilla will fade with time because I know the lactose will not. If blending in coffee will not work I may end up brewing a dry stout to mix into this one. The combo of vanilla, cinnamon and ancho chili came from the idea of a Mexican Hot Chocolate which uses the same ingredients. The Westbrook Brewery in the states makes a similar beer called Mexican Cake that I really enjoyed.