How to make high alcohol sweet beer AG

I assume mash temp needs to be at or above 165F range thus leading to more unfermentables .But if i have too many unfermentables there will be less or little alcohol leading to sweet low alcohol beer.

I am guessing only solution will be to use low attenuation yeast in combo with intermediate mashing temp. range (154F).

Or, mash at high temp, then at the boil time add some sugar(invert-sugar?),DMA,LMA,honey or whatever fermentable sugar?

Hi. 165 F is too hot, 156 -158 will give you a fuller bodied (less fermentable) wort.

If you want high alcohol and full body you'll just have to up your grain bill. Like pappers said you will want to mash at 158 and use a high gravity yeast that will ferment out nicely. My imperial stout had 22 lbs. of grain with an original gravity of 1.096 and fermented out to 1.022 (9.71% ABV) and I mashed that at 158. I also used a highly attenuating yeast (WLP 007) and it worked out well.

You'd be surprised how sweet a big beer really ends up. My barleywine was mashed at 148 for 90 minutes. 1.118 to 1.024 which is amazing attenuation by the way, and it's super sweet and sits at about 13%. It's much harder to ferment out a big beer than it is to leave it sweet.

I agree. I would stick between 156-158 and not go above that. The answer is just add more grain. You can also kinda play around with the yeast you use. Depending on what alcohol level you want, a high gravity ale yeast will go quite high...in the 14% or higher. If you want to keep it at 10% or lower, you may just use a regular high attenuating ale yeast.

The sugars are also another way to go about it, but generally sugars/honey will not up the body just the alcohol.

~r~

Bobby_M said:

You'd be surprised how sweet a big beer really ends up. My barleywine was mashed at 148 for 90 minutes. 1.118 to 1.024 which is amazing attenuation by the way, and it's super sweet and sits at about 13%. It's much harder to ferment out a big beer than it is to leave it sweet.

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77.8% attenuation according to beer smith, I'd say thats pretty damn good!

So yeah, I'd say it all depends on how much alcohol you want. If you're in the 9% range mash high so it won't be on the dry side, if you want 13% mash low so the yeast will fully attenuate.

Above all else yeast selection is a very important factor when doing a high gravity ale. Keep in mind the alcohol tolerance levels are different for each strain.

A lot of times people add simple sugars to big beers to help dry them out, I think if you just mash normally (150-155) with more grain you'll end up with higher alcohol sweeter beer. Look for a good barleywine recipe here (I have a Water to Barleywine inspired beer in primary right now) and maybe drop the hops down a little in bitterness.