Modifying a recipe to a higher gravity.

There are lots of threads on high gravity, but that's not what I'm after. Well kind of....

I was looking at Lil' Sparkys Nut Brown. His OG is around 1.054 which is about 5.5% if all goes well.

If i wanted to bump this up 1% to 6.5% abv how would i best go about it? Do I try to scale the whole recipe or just up the base malt? And should I bump up the IBUs to try and remain balanced?

I been brewing milds and want to do a brown but with some strength to it. I asked the question on his thread but was curious as to how others go about this.

Thanks.

Soldevi said:

scale the whole recipe

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Here you go

haha, that's funny, but it is a worthwhile question. i think he wants to know how/if he should change the malt percentages - across the board multiplication? heavier on base malt? etc.

ddrrseio said:

haha, that's funny, but it is a worthwhile question. i think he wants to know how/if he should change the malt percentages - across the board multiplication? heavier on base malt? etc.

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Yes, that's what I'm asking. I watched a video with John Palmer talking about high gravity and his suggestion was to just up the base malt. But I'm wondering if that will weaken the specialty malt's flavor.

I have beersmith and can just scale the gravity but I don't know...It adjusts everything.

Uhh... let me clarify my response.

Scale the whole recipe, Soldevi had the right idea.

I think the first thing you have to realize is that a higher gravity version of that beer will never taste exactly like the original. That being said you need to find someway to keep the beer balanced. I think I would use beersmith and let it scale the recipe for higher gravity. Keep in mind that you will need to add more hops and have higher IBUs to keep the beer balanced. In beersmith keep an eye on the IBU/SG number and try to maintain that number as you increase the grains.

My impression would be to just adjust the base malt. If you scale across the board, that means up'ing the roasted, crystal, and flaked adjuncts. Thus leading to a darker, much sweeter, and grainier beer with simple scaling. If anything, to maintain the same flavor profile, cut back on the crystal just a bit and up the ibu's just a touch. If it were me, I'd leave everything else the same and simply add base malt. Any way you go, it will probably be a tasty beer

BlindOwl said:

If it were me, I'd leave everything else the same and simply add base malt.

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This is what I was thinking. But then I wondered if maybe adding just base malt would dilute the other flavors. :cross:

Now I'm really torn. haha

I'm with BlindOwl on this one if you are looking to adjust the recipe. If you are just looking for the extra alcohol and nothing else, I would suggest considering just adding sugar. A OG of 1.061 and a FG of 1.012 will give you 6.5% ABV, which means you need to come up with 7 more gravity points than the original recipe. You would get pretty close to that with 3/4 a pound of table sugar, and the sugar contribution would make up 11.5% of your gravity.

For a 1% increase I would just up the base malt and then the hops slightly to keep the same IBU/SG ratio. Scaling up everything is too much hassle for what probably would not be a noticeable difference.

Going from the 5-6% range into Imperial range say (8-9% ) would be different.