Stronger home brew

[spooka]

I was wanting to know the best and most effective way to make any home brew stronger. I was told to use super yeast is this effective?
Thank you in advance :

 

[chrig]

Can you offer any more detail? Do you have a beer kit you wish to increase the abv of ? How strong would you like it to be?

The simple answer is add more sugar, but that isn't the best method.

 

[mattyhall22]

You would need to increase the amount of fermentables for the yeast to work on, not sure how the "super yeasts" you get in alcohol wash kits would affect the beer flavour.

Just adding straight sugar will affect the taste and body of the beer, so need to balance it out with non fermentables.

:

 

[knthrak1982]

Very roughly speaking, for a 5 gallon batch, 1kg of dry malt extract will give you an extra 1.5%. Add hops to balance the sweetness. For sugar, it's more like 2.5% if you add a whole kilogram but it won't be good for flavour. You need a yeast that can handle high gravity/alcohol, possibly using one yeast after another. Look at people's Belgian Trippel brew days for example.

 

[calumscott]

I was wanting to know the best and most effective way to make any home brew stronger. I was told to use super yeast is this effective?
Thank you in advance :

Why do you want it stronger?

To get pissed quicker? Add an extra kilo of sugar.

Because you think that just by making it stronger you'll get the same quality flavour and feel of stronger craft beers? Brew it short. i.e. use less water when you mix up your kit. Brew to 20l rather than 23l, that should retain the balance well, give you a bit more strength but lots more body and flavour.

Because you want to try to make something really different, like an Imperial Stout or Double IPA? That's a whole different ball game...

 

[morethanworts]

Very roughly speaking, for a 5 gallon batch, 1kg of dry malt extract will give you an extra 1.5%. Add hops to balance the sweetness. For sugar, it's more like 2.5% if you add a whole kilogram but it won't be good for flavour. You need a yeast that can handle high gravity/alcohol, possibly using one yeast after another. Look at people's Belgian Trippel brew days for example.

I think at least 75% of most DME is fermentable, so the (still rough) figure for 1Kg of that in 23L would be closer to 1.9%ABV than 1.5%.

Unless you want a dramatic increase in ABV, I would just brew a little short (by 2 or 3 litres on a 23L kit) and add a bit more sugar (maybe 500g). At least try that once and see if you like the result.

I think quite a lot of homebrewers ignore the effect of priming sugars on ABV too and quote their results without. Using the forum calculator alone (OG to FG) will not account for that, so if you're really keen to calculate the final, packaged, ABV as close as possible, include the effect of the priming sugars. This formula will get it as close as I know how, without actually taking the gravity of a dissolved priming solution:

(Batch size being packaged in litres / Fermentable priming sugar in grammes)/18

So 80g table sugar in 23L will add roughly 0.2% ABV. For some of my fizzy Belgian ales, I've added enough to raise the ABV by nearly 0.5%.

The HMRC calculations are here (click), which are used by small breweries without a full lab.

You may be slightly closer to your target than you realise!

 

[spooka]

I'm totally new to all this and I'm still working through what is what. I am looking to increase the Alcohol volume to a maximum of 6% and I have no idea. I have only used home brew kits from places like Boyes. I have stuff that I have never used simply because i have no idea what it's for. Any good guidebooks that people know of I'd appreciate. Thanks for the replies guys.

 

[kev]

Wtf?!

I can get 10% no bother at all. 6% is easy.

You need more fermentables. What combination you use them in will determine the flavour of the finished product.

K