How much sugar to yeast to aclohol!

[Mattyg91]

Okay, so, I am making a hard root beer. I am going to use a regular root beer recipe and pitch my yeast like I would normally do with any other beer. Then I will allow it to ferment, and I will back sweeten with the appropriate amount of sugar for priming and xylitol for sweetness. My question is, the recipe I’m using for my root beer calls for 4 pounds of sugar in the 5 gallon batch.

1. Is 4 lbs of sugar going to produce enough alcohol during fermentation, or should I add more, to reach at least 5%?

2. If 4 lbs is enough, will one pack of Kveik Lutra be enough yeast to ferment the 4 lbs of sugar in 7ish days?

Thanks in advance.

 

[khannon]

iirc it was 1lb sugar per gallon of water = SG bump of ~.044 so ~5.5%, so I think 4 ls in 5 gallons is going to be just shy of 5%. Of course I think you want to make sure to add yeast nutrients to keep them happy.

One 10-11g pack of dry yeast should be enough.

 

[rburrelli]

When I make a 5 gallon batch of hard seltzer 4-1/2 lb of table sugar hits slightly over 6 ABV.

 

[mac_1103]

One pound of table sugar has 46 gravity points. So four pounds in five gallons should give you an OG of 1.037. Assuming a FG of 1.000 you'll get an ABV of 4.83%.

 

[mac_1103]

For your second question, I've never used Kveik, but one pack of almost any yeast should be able to ferment five gallons of that SG. You might want to look into whether you need to add nutrients though.