Home Brew ABV vs Commercial ABV

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Gremlyn

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I would assume it is illegal for a company to misrepresent their ABV on their comercially sold product. My first brew, which I am now drinking, is an all around good beer. Good taste without any big off flavours, and my recalculated ABV puts me between 5-5.5%. Trouble is, one bottle of it and I can feel it! I'm not exactly a small person, nor do I have a very low alcohol tolderance, so this is confusing. I drank a 20-ish oz store bought dunkelweizen last night without a similar effect. That was 5.3% ABV on the label.

Of course, I don't MIND drinking my beer and getting a slight buzz :tank:
 
it is all perception. Alcohol is alcohol. If you measured right, then you're not getting any more alcohol. It could be what you ate or didn't eat, it could be how tired you are or a number of other factors.

But I wouldn't worry about it. Maybe you're just drunk on satisfaction.
 
I would assume it is illegal for a company to misrepresent their ABV on their comercially sold product. My first brew, which I am now drinking, is an all around good beer. Good taste without any big off flavours, and my recalculated ABV puts me between 5-5.5%. Trouble is, one bottle of it and I can feel it! I'm not exactly a small person, nor do I have a very low alcohol tolderance, so this is confusing. I drank a 20-ish oz store bought dunkelweizen last night without a similar effect. That was 5.3% ABV on the label.

Of course, I don't MIND drinking my beer and getting a slight buzz :tank:

I've don'e the exact same thing.I think it's b/c you are so tuned in to how you feel with how much you drink when you are the one who brewed it.You will find sometimes even when you brew one that you know is only 4% alc.,that you will feel it more than you remember feeling after 1 BMC lite beer.
Just wait till a long brew day when you haven't had much to eat and you chug down one of those 8% belgians youv'e been aging or a big IPA and see what happens!!:drunk:
 
Are you measuring ABV or ABW? ABV will be a higher number than ABW for the same beer. Your hydrometer gives you ABW.

No offense if you already knew this.
 
Are you measuring ABV or ABW? ABV will be a higher number than ABW for the same beer. Your hydrometer gives you ABW.

No offense if you already knew this.

No worries, always beter to assume someone doesn't know something just in case :) Pretty sure my hydrometer was ABV, but I could be wrong. I'll double check on that tomorrow when I am back home.

it is all perception. Alcohol is alcohol. If you measured right, then you're not getting any more alcohol. It could be what you ate or didn't eat, it could be how tired you are or a number of other factors.

But I wouldn't worry about it. Maybe you're just drunk on satisfaction.

My original calculation gave me 3.5%, but then I realised I didn't account for temp, so I went back and did it again. I figured there wouldn't be a commercial vs homebrew difference. Must be all in my head, maybe this means I can finally get drunk off of beer again! an't remember the last time I was able to do that :)
 
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