[tommymorris]

You could add artificial butter to the finished beer.

I wouldn’t though. I had the butter beer. I hated it.


- formerly alestateyall.

[hopfenundmalz]

Ferment too cold, secondary early like after the first 3 or 4 days of fermentation, etc.  This should get you a relatively buttery beer if all the conditions are right, and if you used a yeast strain that is prone to it.

I suppose I could take a look at my old lager brew logs and figure out which yeast caused the most diacetyl for me -- await an update from me in a little while.  My guess is probably 2308 or WLP820 or both -- I haven't used either one of those in many years now, and haven't had any diacetyl problems at all in many years either (which I think is good, but you...)

In addition to my old quote above, you could also lock in diacetyl by racking early and often.  Yeast eats diacetyl.  But after primary fermentation is mostly complete, if you immediately rack the beer, chill it down, wait a couple days, then rack again, thus removing like 99% of all the yeast, there won't be as many yeasties to eat the diacetyl, thus locking it in a bit.

You're crazy, you've been gone a while, but you're obviously serious about your request, so we'll help you out if we can.

White Labs has some diacetyl numbers on their website, sadly it is not complete.

Two I found quickly. 830 ~ 231 ppb, 833~ 90 ppb.

[dmtaylor]

Okay, gents, I just conducted a detailed review of every homebrew I've made since 2005 that had significant diacetyl.  This resulted in 6 hits for me since 2005.  The following yeasts all exhibited diacetyl for at least 3-4 weeks after packaging:

WLP820 (twice)
WLP830 (once)
2206 (once)
2565 (twice)

In 5 out of 6 cases, the diacetyl was gone after 3-4 weeks of conditioning.  The 1 exception was when I added sorbate at bottling to prevent excessive carbonation in the bottles.  It actually worked, but the diacetyl lingered for probably ~6 months, and it took that long to fully carbonate as well, but the finished beer after all that time is actually very good and I still have a couple bottles left.  But anyway.....

Seems to me that sorbate might help lock in diacetyl for anyone who might want that, assuming that you started with diacetyl already in the beer and just wanted to hurt the yeast so they can't eat it.  I'd recommend force-carbonation vs. natural carbonation from priming because it took forever for the primed bottles to carbonate.

And the most common fermentation schedule that caused diacetyl for me:

6-9 days at 50-53 F primary
3-6 days at 60-65 F "diacetyl rest" -- ha!!
2-3 weeks at 32-53 F lagering
<3 weeks in the package at ~60 F

That last line is important because like I say, diacetyl almost always disappears within 4 weeks.

Cheers and good luck.

P.S.  For the record, for those who wish to AVOID diacetyl, these days I don't fiddle with temperature changes so much, and I ferment a bit warmer than I used to, and I think those are some of the reasons I don't get much diacetyl anymore.  For example, the maibock I just brewed with S-189 yeast at 64 F for ~6 weeks in primary exhibited no diacetyl at any point throughout fermentation.  I'll be doing that ferm schedule again in future, with other strains as well.

[erockrph]

Butterbeer sounds like a vanilla gose, minus the lactic acid, to me. Maybe a low-gravity mild brewed with WLP002, cold-crashed after 48 hours and spiked with butterscotch extract and a touch of salt?

[Jeff Zesch]

Did you try this?  How did it turn out?  What about using equal parts DME and Butterscotch sauce?  A half pound of each per gallon would give an OG of about 1.044 and an ABV of 5%.  There are several butterscotch sauce recipes out there.  Just wondering how the cream and butter would hold up to the fermentation process.

[EHall]

there's also butterscotch coffee flavored syrups you could add after fermentation...

[Michael Thompson]

What would you use in your grain bill? Is there anything that produces a lot of diacetyl?

[joe_meadmaker]

You could give this a try.  One member posted that it worked well.

https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=35212.0