Adding Strenght to my brew

[foxhound]

I've looked through the forum and I'm surprised I can't find the answer to this! :|

I've tried several ways to add strength, abv, to my beer but can't find a good way to do it. I've tried:
Adding golden syrup to a bitter recipe, but this added too much sweetness.
Adding brown sugar, which did add strenth but a strange taste and lemonade type bubbles, larger than the usual beer ones. Yuk, ended up down the sink :cry:
Adding black treacle to stout, added a strange taste. Yuk ended up down the sink. :cry:

I've heard that adding sucrose could do the trick and spraymalt too. What do you guys think? What's your preferred way to add strength, how, what and how much please?
:drunk:

 

[Sussex Hopburner]

Brewing sugar
Malt extract
Sugar

Any fermentable sugar will add strength- different varities will add differing taste

 

[Grumpy Jack]

I like to use a dark muscovado sugar in darker ales and a dark spray malt and also brew it a little short, makes for a superior brew over the longer time and amore complex and richer taste with a kick...

 

[Dunfie]

I've looked through the forum and I'm surprised I can't find the answer to this! :|

I've tried several ways to add strength, abv, to my beer but can't find a good way to do it. I've tried:
Adding golden syrup to a bitter recipe, but this added too much sweetness.
Adding brown sugar, which did add strenth but a strange taste and lemonade type bubbles, larger than the usual beer ones. Yuk, ended up down the sink :cry:
Adding black treacle to stout, added a strange taste. Yuk ended up down the sink. :cry:

I've heard that adding sucrose could do the trick and spraymalt too. What do you guys think? What's your preferred way to add strength, how, what and how much please?
:drunk:

Brown sugar and treacle will certainly change the profile of the beer so I won't comment on that.

Golden syrup should ferment out and leave no residual sweetness so this wasn't your problem. I would suspect that the yeast didn't ferment the kit out properly and left you with too high a gravity. You could try using a different yeast from the one that comes with the kit to see if this will allow the kit to ferment out. Once you are sure of this then you can add extra alcoho by adding whichever fermentable you want.

 

[foxhound]

Hi Dunfie

Thanks for that, I'll try a different yeast! I've heard spraymalt is probably the best as it's a malt so would add to the tase. If so how much would I add to a 40 pint brew and when? Assuming I'm using DME and hops, boling for 90 minutes and ending up with 40 pints. By the way I've started to use the recipies in the book British Real Ale by Graham Wheeler. So far used two, but want extra strenght.

Cheers :drink:

 

[richc]

I'd suggest sticking your recipe into a calculator (eg. beercalculus.hopville.com/recipe) and adding extra spraymalt etc. until you get the strength you want.

 

[foxhound]

Hi Richc

I've had a very quick look at that website. Wow, there's loads of variations of fermentables you can use. I'll give it a try, many thanks for that. :thumb: