McCall St. Brewer

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My mash tun is an orange 5 gallon cooler. I can just barely squeeze about 12 lbs. of grain and the mashing water in their. The result is that my AG batches have tended to have somewhat low alcohol content. They taste good, but don't tend to pack much of a punch.

I just racked a batch to the secondary last night and when I tasted it I felt that it was particularly weak.

I am wondering, is it too late to give it a bit of a corn sugar boost? Would there be anything wrong with boiling up some sugar in some water, letting it cool and adding it to the carboy? I assume if I did this that the yeast in the beer would fire back up and I would have another ferment going on in there.

How much sugar would I use? Would a pound make noticable difference in the beer? How much water would I need to boil up a poound of corn sugar?

Funkenjaeger

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This is like deja vu... I'm quite sure that just yesterday someone was also asking about putting corn sugar in secondary. I believe the consensus was something like:

"sure, if you want to wake the yeast back up, have your beer cloud back up, end up with more yeast in secondary, dry out and throw off the flavor profile of your beer"

I tend to agree. Adding corn sugar is just going to make your beer more dry, thin, and boozy. In moderation it won't hurt much but I really don't see the point. If you're that concerned with ABV, get a bigger mash tun and brew bigger beers... or brew smaller (like 4-gallon) but higher gravity beers with your current MLT... or supplement with some extract - but do it during the boil, rather than after primary is complete.

RedSun

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If you want another 1% abv, get some 1% alcohol boost. Adds the punch without throwing off your flavor profile. AHB has it, tried it once, seemed to work out just fine.

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Colossus Brewing
Purveyors of Red Sun, Wrath of Khan, Kwisatz Haderach and Flawless Victory

[Primary and Secondary]
Test Your Might - (Amber Victory Ale)

[Bottled or Drinking]
Red Sun - (Kryptonian Red)
Usul - (American Honey Wheat)
Weirding Way - (American Honey Wheat)

Colossus - 50qt Mash Tun

malkore

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another option too, is to do a 3rd batch sparge.

I know when I did my 12# porter grain bill, I really couldn't fit enough water in my 5gallon MLT to even get enough wort to end up with 5gallons post boil.

I'd mash like normal, but then do two slightly smaller sparges (complete with vorlauf) to extract a little more fermentable sugar.

otherwise, you need to do the corn sugar during the boil, not in secondary.

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Malkore
Primary: English Mild
On tap: Pale Ale, Lancelot's Wheat, English Brown Ale, Steam Beer, HoovNuts IPA
Bottled: MOAM, Braggot, Raspberry Melomel, Merlot, Apfelwein, Pyment, Sweet mead, Cabernet
Gal in 2009: 27, Gal in 2010: 34, Gal in 2011: 13, Gal in 2012: 10

Jo3sh

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For this batch, you're probably going to have to live with it unless you want to live with the side effects Funkenjaeger (funky hunter?) mentioned. For future batches, it sounds like it's time to build a new, larger tun.

I have observed that a tun the same size as your batch size (that is, a 5 gallon tun for 5 gallon batches) will get you in the neighborhood of 1.035 - 1.040. Lots of brewers use a tun 1.5 times their batch size (as I do - a fifteen gallon tun for 10 gallon batches), and that's good for something like 1.070. If you want to make really big beers, you need to look at a double-sized tun, or do two mashes.

One dodge I have discussed with a fellow brewer is to run the same grist in both of our tuns. The first runnings from both tuns go into one boiler for a barleywine or Imperial Stout, and the second runnings go into the other boiler for a pale ale or export stout, depending on the gravity.

Chad

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How big a beer are you trying to make? My last two batches hit 1.060 easily from a 5gal mash tun. One looks like it's right at 6%ABV, the second will come in at 5.5%. You might look at your mash procedure and efficiency if you are not getting the fermentables that you need.

There are a couple of ways to get bigger beers from a 5gal mash tun. You could sparge more and do longer boils. You could heat the first and second runnings as your sparge water and cap the mash with a little extra grain. You could (as I'm going to do on my next batch) do two mashes and use the first runnings from each for a big (1.080 - 1.090) beer and the second/third runnings for a mid-gravity beer. Or you could just add some DME/LME to your boil.

Lots of options.

Hope this helps,
Chad

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Chad Ward
An Edge in the Kitchen
William Morrow Cookbooks
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BlindLemonLars

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What kind of efficiency are you achieving? Assuming 75% efficiency, 12lbs of grain ought to get you to around 1.065, which to me anyhow is a fairly big beer. (Most of my brews range from 1.040 to 1.055.)

I'd never add fermentables to the secondary, it defeats the purpose of what is supposed to be a clearing stage. If you're not getting enough from the mash to suit your tastes, just add some DME to the boil, there is no shame in that.

covered95

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Have you considered asking santa for a 10 gallon cooler?

avidhomebrewer

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Get a 10 gallon cooler (as many in this thread have mentioned) and you will be able to brew batches that come in around 12% ABV. I have a 5 and a 10 gallon cooler and wish I had only 2 10's; but I don't so gotta make the best of it. If you want to brew a big brew with only your 5 gal, do a re-iterated mash (use your collected wort as mash liquor to conduct another mash). Check out BYO-they recently did an article on it.

BuffaloSabresBrewer

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McCall St. Brewer
Posts: 895

less posting more reading
this gets discussed way too much

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