Trencher

Recipes 

Brewed my first Belgian today, a simple pale ale intended to be a session beer for SWMBO's birthday party. Unfortunately I missed my OG badly, falling 8 points short, but decided to try making up the gravity by adding some sugar to the primary. As a ballpark I figured 1.5lb light brown sugar boiled in 1qt of water and added to the 5.25gal batch a couple days into fermentation would get me in the right range, but this brought up the question of accurately calculating my OG in such a situation.

I suspect plenty of people make Double IPAs and Belgian Triple/Quadruple styles by adding sugar to the primary in order to increase the OG and alcohol while still finishing with a low FG. How do you calculate the gravity increase when planning these beers?

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Q: Why don't elephants like penguins?

A: They can't get the wrappers off.

nebben

Recipes 

You can assume that the brown sugar will ferment completely. Take your original gravity reading, and your initial volume at that reading. Go to the Fermcalc (I use it for port wine syrup feeding and also for fortification calculations) , and enter in these values in the Sugar tab.

As an example, I just plugged in 1.065 as the original gravity. The resulting adjusted starting gravity after adding 1.5lbs brown sugar+1qt water after fermentation has already begun, assuming 5.25G original volume, is 1.073 @ 5.61G new volume.

WorryWort

Recipes 

I think most people would add the sugar to boil, as opposed to the primary. Regardless - and someone will correct me if I'm wrong - you will calculate a primary addition in the same, as adding it later shouldn't decrease it's fermentability.

Did you use brewing software? If so just add sugar to the recipe and see how many points it adds. Otherwise, I'm sure someone will chime in with a calculator or formula.

Also - I just learned that Penguins are Scottish chocolate bars. Never met a joke I didn't want to understand!

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In Process - Russian Imperial Stout, Nelson Sauvin Rye IPA, Mild No.3

In Kegs - Barley Wine, Apfelwein, Wild BlackBerry Wheat, Coffee Oatmeal Porter

Gone - so many :(

fastasaturtle

Recipes 

According to Beersmith, 1 lb of Belgian Candi sugar adds .007 to the O.G. (took my last recipe from 1.075 to 1.082).

(Oops, I just realized this thread has been dormant for almost 3 years...)