Hello and help!

Hello,

We did our first all grain brew yesterday but are a bit disappointed with the hydrometer reading of only 1030. Can we add some sugar to this to increase the % or will this ruin the beer?

Thanks!

Adding too much sugar will give off flavors to your beer. I would chalk it up to a learning experience and make some changes to your technique in the future to improve efficiency. What was your system / method / recipe?

Hi Jekster

We used a brew kettle to mash the grain but the grain bag we had was too small and so I don't think that the grain moved around enough, I am going to make a new bag - a sort of lining for the kettle and use that instead so it should be better next time.

So would you not risk adding any sugar? we have been doing malt extract beers and they have had quite a bit of sugar added and tasted OK ...... is it different with full grain?

Thanks for your help

I'd areee that you'd probably be best chalking this one up to growing pains, leave it be and move on to your next brew.

To me, the important thing is that the beer I make tastes good - not how much alcohol it has in it. I've brewed everything from a 3% beer to a 10% beer.

If you feel you need to boost the SG, you could always boil up some malt extract and use that! I would NOT use sugar, though.

Thanks, I will leave it alone!

So how do you brew a higher alcohol beer? Is it just based on the mash, does more grain equal more alcohol or is it more to do with the quality of the mash process?

We used 4kg of grain in a 5 gallon brew kettle and it seemed an awful lot of grain

It sounds like you need a mash tun where you can really do it right. I don't know how you can do a proper mash with a one pot setup and trying to get your grains out in a bag. That works fine for steeping, but not for mashing, and it sounds like that's what you are trying to do.


TL

I have used 5% corn sugar to help attenuation, but if you are wanting to bring the OG up much I would get some DME (Dry Malt Extract) or some LME (Liquid Malt Extract). I try and keep a few pounds of DME for when my OG is low, and I use it for yeast starters.

Yep, you need a real mash tun. Get a cooler and build one of these with some copper tubing from Lowes (saw thin slits all the way down the tubing on the bottom side for drainage) and you will see your efficiency double:



You will also need to replace valve that comes on the cooler with sturdier one. Mashing with a bag in a pot will never give you good efficiency and is very likely to give you too many husks and cause tannin issues during your boil.

I too would never suggest sugar to boost the OG. even in an extract kit. more alcohol without body doesn't create an accurate beer to style.

More grain, better mashing and sparging (it kinda sounds like you didn't sparge the grain bag thoroughly?)...I too vote for a 'real' mash-lauter tun. I prefer a cooler with a SS braid cuz its simpler than cutting all that copper and slotting it.