Upping ABV on very low ABV beer

I decided to give my local homebrew place a shot and bought some grains from him and he ran it through the mill. I asked what his crush setting was and he wasn't sure (should have been clue #1). I bought the grains anyway and decided to brew yesterday. Well, my system has been pretty consistent at ~78% (give or take a percent) and this thread isn't about my efficiency (which was 54% for this brew). I know grain crush is a big contributing factor and am pretty sure that was my problem. Bottom line is that I am looking at a hefe with a 2.8% ABV. Anything I can do to up the ABV without turning it into hefe flavored rubbing alcohol? I was going to split the batch and do half with fruit... figuring it would add more alcohol. Should I just do the whole batch on fruit? Add DME? If the consensus is to add something, when is the best time to add?

My main goal is not to drastically alter the flavor, just up the ABV a little bit. Maybe get it to 4%

Thanks for any advice.

huge1s said:

I decided to give my local homebrew place a shot and bought some grains from him and he ran it through the mill. I asked what his crush setting was and he wasn't sure (should have been clue #1). I bought the grains anyway and decided to brew yesterday. Well, my system has been pretty consistent at ~78% (give or take a percent) and this thread isn't about my efficiency (which was 54% for this brew). I know grain crush is a big contributing factor and am pretty sure that was my problem. Bottom line is that I am looking at a hefe with a 2.8% ABV. Anything I can do to up the ABV without turning it into hefe flavored rubbing alcohol? I was going to split the batch and do half with fruit... figuring it would add more alcohol. Should I just do the whole batch on fruit? Add DME? If the consensus is to add something, when is the best time to add?

My main goal is not to drastically alter the flavor, just up the ABV a little bit. Maybe get it to 4%

Thanks for any advice.

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Just add some DME, boiled in a little water and cooled. You get about 43 points per pound of DME. So, if you want to add 1.6% ABV you could use two pounds of DME in as little water as possible to dissolve/boil it and you'd be all set.

Yooper said:

Just add some DME, boiled in a little water and cooled. You get about 43 points per pound of DME. So, if you want to add 1.6% ABV you could use two pounds of DME in as little water as possible to dissolve/boil it and you'd be all set.

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thanks for the advice.... Since this is a hefe, I will probably add some wheat based DME. Any suggestion on the timing? Wait until primary fermentation is done? ASAP? Doesn't matter?

wait... maybe I am thinking about this wrong. My AG recipe should have been 1.050 and ended up at 1.030. This means I need 20 points to get it up to what I originally planned. At 43 point per pound of DME... wouldn't i need a half pound?

/edit
after thinking about it, I think i would need half a pound per gallon of beer... which would mean I would need .5 x 5 = 2.5 pounds if I wanted to get it up to the original.

Yes, you should use wheat DME. Wheat extract is typically only a portion wheat with the rest coming from regular 2-row. Add it to primary as soon as possible while the yeast are still active. You are on track with your math.

gracias denada.... looks like I will be making a stop on the way home (at least they don't have to crush the DME ).

I'm about to try this experiment too with a double chocolate stout that tastes great in the gravity samples but rings in at about 4.4% abv.

Wish me luck!

I think that's .43 points per pound of dme per gallon of water. So adjust that based on your batch size.

seabass07 said:

I think that's .43 points per pound of dme per gallon of water. So adjust that based on your batch size.

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That's right... Here's a link to Palmer's explanation:
http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter3-4.html

He says that the range is 1.040 - 1.043 per pound of DME per gallon.

I assume I should boil the DME for 10 minutes, cool, then add. correct? boil longer?

last question (hopefully). Should I try and aerate the DME wert? Yeast was pitched 24 hours ago.

huge1s said:

I assume I should boil the DME for 10 minutes, cool, then add. correct? boil longer?

Click to expand...

10 minutes is overkill, but fine.

huge1s said:

last question (hopefully). Should I try and aerate the DME wert? Yeast was pitched 24 hours ago.

Click to expand...

No, you shouldn't need to aerate it. Gently pour it in when cool, without splashing.

that was interesting... I heated up the water and had a booger of a time getting the DME to disolve in so little water, but eventually got it. I sanitized a paddle and poured the DME/Liquid into the fermenter and it started foaming like crazy. Good thing I keep my fermenter in a big tub because it overflowed. I stirred it in and it eventually settled down. Now is farting away as if nothing ever happened. Hopefully this fixes this beer.

huge1s said:

that was interesting... I heated up the water and had a booger of a time getting the DME to disolve in so little water, but eventually got it. I sanitized a paddle and poured the DME/Liquid into the fermenter and it started foaming like crazy. Good thing I keep my fermenter in a big tub because it overflowed. I stirred it in and it eventually settled down. Now is farting away as if nothing ever happened. Hopefully this fixes this beer.

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Amazing. Keep us posted!

My plan is to split my batch and do this with only half. Actually it will be a 2x experiment because I'll use 2L PET bottles for half the batch and a carbonator cap. Hopefully I'll have time to do it this week.

after adding more liquid to my 5.5 gallon batch and it foaming up like that... i was a bit nervous that it was going to gunk up my airlock, but it was fine this morning. Last night it was fermenting like crazy and has slowed down a bit this morning. Once this is ready, I will update this thread to let you all know how it turned out.

huge1s said:

after adding more liquid to my 5.5 gallon batch and it foaming up like that... i was a bit nervous that it was going to gunk up my airlock, but it was fine this morning. Last night it was fermenting like crazy and has slowed down a bit this morning. Once this is ready, I will update this thread to let you all know how it turned out.

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cool! I'm betting it bubbled up and over because of the CO2 that was "dissolved" in the wort as the yeast are working, it hadn't bubbled out yet, and when you distrubed it with the fresh DME wort, it was enough to get some CO2 to bubble out and foam over.

when I did my last batch, I left it on the kitchen counter until I saw the air lock bubbling, to show me the yeast were good and happy. as soon as it was showing me a few bubbles every couple of seconds, I picked it up and carried it to the basement, and the slight disturbance while moving it caused the airlock to bubble like crazy for a few seconds, then settled back down.

I split this batch and bottled 3 gallons as a regular hefeweizen last week. I put 3 pounds of peaches in a 3.5 gallon bucket and racked the rest onto the peaches for a week and bottled that on Sunday. Both half batches seemed to taste ok. Some other notes about this brew:

I tried using a priming sugar calculator to (hopefully) give these hefes the right amount of carbonation according to style. I chickened out a bit and went a little under on the amount of corn sugar to avoid bottle bombs.

When bottling the peach hefe... I put the tube into a nylon bag to catch any peach debrit. After bottling all that I could, i drank the last swig from the bottling bucket and it tasted like sugar water. I usually don't stir the bottling bucket and any "last swigs" I have had just taste like warm flat beer. I hope this doesn't mean I have a 6 pack waiting to explode. I think the nylon back restricted the flow and caused the sugar water not to mix as well.

Will update after the first bottle is cracked open.

Update:

I popped a couple of the regular hefeweizens in the fridge after 2 weeks in the bottle. I know... 3 weeks... but the first hefe I did was pretty good to go at 2 weeks so I thought I would take a sample. Wife's comment: "This is the best beer you have made yet". Crap.... how am I supposed to re-create this now? lol.