Alcohol content

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Runswithlightning

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Saw a recipe for a dogfish 120 minute clone that involved adding sugar during fermentation. My question is, how do you determine alcohol content if you are doing this?
 
I imagine you just keep a running tally. If you know the total amount of fermentables you added, and you take an FG, you have your alcohol content.
 
MATH!... ok but you guessed that.

step one. Take the OG. Step 2 take how much sugar you add. step 3 take the FG and run it through the math.

Basically the og describs the density, but we call it in points, so a 1.040 has '40 points if that is 1 gallon, then it has 40 points. If it has 5 gallons, then it is 200 points (40*5).

Fermentables (sugar, malt, etc) have a standard 'point per pound gallon' value. Table (brown and something else) have a pppg of 45. So 1 pound of sugar in 1 gallon of water shoudl be 1.045 SG.

Anyhow. If you had an OG of 1.065 on this DF 120 min clone (yes I'm making up numbers now) and added 2 lb of sugar with a start volume of 5 gallons, your original points woudl be 5*65=325 and you've added 90 points (45*2) for a total of 415 points/5gallons to get the 'assumed OG' gets you 83 or 1.083 If the FG comes in at 1.020 then you can figure the ABV from there.

Anyhow give me the numbers and I'll happily work the math for you.

BTW, where abouts in Manchester NH? I used to live in the area.
 
I do it the lazy way.

Plug the recipe without the sugar into your brew software and get an OG, then add all the sugar to get another OG. Check you first OG when you brew. If it right on then the second OG will be what it will be after you add the sugar.

If your original OG is off slighlty then adjust the other OG by the same amount.

I brew a lot of Belgians and do sugar additons to the fermenter all the time and this seems to work for me.
 
I brewed a DFH 120 clone. So I can tell you allllll about it. It's essentially a lot of math.

The initial OG is easy: Take a hydrometer reading once the brew day is over. Mine came out at 1.099. Then the fun starts.

1lb of Dextrose adds roughly .008 gravity points to a 5gal batch (.007 to a 6gal batch). So you just have to keep track of how much sugar you've added, and make the calcs.

I have a pretty big thread here that detailed the whole process: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/dfh-120-minute-clone-259314/
 
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