Advice please - Increasing ABV from beer kits

[Michael Burnley]

What is the advised method of increasing ABV of a kit such as woodfordes wherry, I prefer beers of about 5 - 5.5% ABV

Would I brew short ?

Or would more sugar/yeast/other addition, increase ABV

Many thanks for any suggestions

 

[clibit]

Light dried extract works,well. Maybe some brewing sugar with it, 250g ish, if you want to lighten the body a bit.. A grain mash is the best though, and much cheaper, around £1.50 per kg, soak pale malt in 3 litres of water per kg at 65-70 C for about 45 mins. See the sticky in the how to section.

 

[Slid]

What is the advised method of increasing ABV of a kit such as woodfordes wherry, I prefer beers of about 5 - 5.5% ABV

Would I brew short ?

Or would more sugar/yeast/other addition, increase ABV

Many thanks for any suggestions

I add 500g of table sugar, but clibit's approach will give you a superior end product.:thumb:

 

[rodwha]

Know that if you add sugars/DME you'll reduce the IBU's a little bit too.

With prehopped cans of extract I add DME to a pot and make a 20 and 5 min hop addition. But then the kits that I'm talking about (Mr Beer) are woefully underhopped to begin with.

 

[brewpirate]

DME/Spray malt/ sucrose/ dextrose add 39 points per gallon per lb. For a 23l batch every 450g will increase your gravity 6.5 points which is roughly .75% abv. Hope that helps.

Add 1/4 1/2 of your malt at the start of your boil then add the rest at 20min. This will help with the IBU loss if you only bumping the recipe up a little.

Edit:
Also if you plan on increasing well beyond 1.055 you will need to add additional yeast if possible.