increasing the alcohol content

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JABrewery

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so I'm brewing an "all american light style" and the OG was 1.050 and a week later I took another reading and its at 1.031. I know I have read somewhere that you can add more extract or sugar or something to bring up the alcohol content, but I don't remember where I read it.
anyways my question to all of you is can you do anything at this point to bring it up or not?
Thanks
Tim
 
so I'm brewing an "all american light style" and the OG was 1.050 and a week later I took another reading and its at 1.031. I know I have read somewhere that you can add more extract or sugar or something to bring up the alcohol content, but I don't remember where I read it.
anyways my question to all of you is can you do anything at this point to bring it up or not?
Thanks
Tim

If the current SG is 1.031, the beer isn't finished. That's way too high to consider it done! I'd keep it at optimum fermentation temperatures and check it in a week. If it's stuck at 1.031, adding more sugars/fermentables will only compound the problem.
 
IMO your best bet at this point is to leave it alone & make something different next time. If you open it up to add anything, you risk oxidation.

Edit: Yooper's the pro though.
 
Adding more malt or sugar does increase ABV but that has nothing to do with your current problem.
If your beer is sitting at 1.031 it's nowhere near done, that style should finish around 1.008-1.014, give it another week of not doing anything than check your gravity again, if it hasn't moved than you'll have to do something to get fermentation started again which could include rousing the yeast or pitching new yeast.
On future batches if you want to increase your ABV you can add more malt or sugar at the start to raise your OG which will produce more alcohol, adding sugar to this brew will only make the problem worse, you want the gravity to go down not up.
 
what temperature is the fermenter right now? Try to get it to 70F for a day or two to get the yeast going
 
thanks for all the help. Let it sit another week took a reading and its down to 1.018. Now just going to take another reading tomorrow to see if it changes. Should I wait longer or just take two more readings and if it doesn't change then its ready for bottling?
 
thanks for all the help. Let it sit another week took a reading and its down to 1.018. Now just going to take another reading tomorrow to see if it changes. Should I wait longer or just take two more readings and if it doesn't change then its ready for bottling?

Most people here will tell you to leave it for another week. Many leave it for 3 weeks before bottling to let the beer clear more and let the yeast clean up a tad
 
Even if you're fermenting with a very average performing yeast (looking at ~70% attenuation), you should reach 1015. Let it ride.
 
Thanks once again. I'm going to let it sit another week.
I guess this is why you brew back to back cause my patience is running low I need some homebrew!
 
Thanks once again. I'm going to let it sit another week.
I guess this is why you brew back to back cause my patience is running low I need some homebrew!

The hardest part is getting the pipeline started.
 
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