triple scale hydrometer

do you still have to do all the math to figure out alcohol content or just read from the hydrometer? and one more for ya how do you make the alcohol content higher in the beers??

Even with a triple scale hydrometer, you will take two readings on the alcohol scale and subtract the second from the first to get your alcohol percentage. Or you can just use the gravity numbers and use an online calculator to get a more accurate reading.

The best way to increase alcohol content as well as make a decent tasting beer is to increase the amount of fermentable sugars. For example if you are brewing extract brews, you would add more extract to increase the ABV. You will find recipes where you will be told just to add table sugar, etc... You do not want to do this unless you want bad tasting beer.

If you haven't found it yet, I highly recommend reading the online version of How to Brew, or buying a paper copy of the book. It will answer many of the questions you probably have.

Also check out the Homebrewing Wiki on this forum.

You could do the math or you could use a cheat sheet.

http://www.meadmadecomplicated.org/mead_making/procedure/alcohol_content.pdf

triple scale just means it has Plato, Brix and SG scales on it. you still need OG and FG (or O Plato/Brix, F Plato/Brix) to calculate ABV.