High Gravity Brewing

High Gravity Brewing = Brewing a high gravity beer to dilute after fermentation to get a larger volume of product.

Has anyone tried it? It is supposed to increase the esters. If you double the OG, you get 4X the esters produced, so if you subsequently dilute it by 50%, you will end up with 2X the esters that you would have gotten if you just straight brewed the beer.

I'm wondering what it would do to a fruity Belgian. Brew a 1.100 beer, use decent temps to get decent esters and attenuation, then dilute to get an effective OG of 1.050/1.060. You could have a dry 6% beer with a ton of flavor.

I can't think of any other type of beer that could get any benefit from this method.

not sure if that is correct but definitely interisting... I like the idea of a crap load of 6% dry Belgian pale ale

iirc the megabrewers do this a lot

Interesting. With a beer that big, you have a Quad for Belgain (if that's even a true style). Even shooting for a lot of esters, you'd need a ton of active yeast before starting.

I would think a lot of extra conditioning time would be necessary to smooth out a 1.10 beer, when there are easier ways to manipulate ester creation from regular strength brews (pithing rate, fermentation temps, etc).

solbes said:

I would think a lot of extra conditioning time would be necessary to smooth out a 1.10 beer, when there are easier ways to manipulate ester creation from regular strength brews (pithing rate, fermentation temps, etc).

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I'm wonder what you would get if you employed all these different ways to get higher esters in a higher gravity beer and then diluted it.

If you really do get the increased ester production, you could get a 6% beer with 2X the esters that you could possibly get with normal manipulation.

It may be way too fruity.

Just thinking. I might actually make a batch, keep half at the higher gravity and see what the other half is like when diluted with water and carb'd.