Is it just me...

[Buick Beer Gardens]

Or do home brewed beers have a higher alcohol content than the usual off the shelf brands?

 

[camonick]

Or do home brewed beers have a higher alcohol content than the usual off the shelf brands?

Only if you make them that way...

 

[grampamark]

Homebrew can have, within the limits of a given process, whatever ABV you want.

 

[brownni5]

It's just you.

 

[HopsAreGood]

Agreed. It’s just you.

 

[Dland]

It is pretty easy to make some fine brews that have higher ABV than most "standard" type brews, it may not be just you.

 

[CMassBrewer]

Mine are usually lower...haha

 

[eric19312]

Actually I find it’s easier to make really good home brew at 7-8% than at 4% ABV.

 

[Buick Beer Gardens]

It's just you.

Or I'm drinking off the shelf low grade rotgut.

 

[hjblwme]

Or I'm drinking off the shelf low grade rotgut.

Stay away from the rotgut, that stuff will kill you.

My take is like this. When most folks buy beer they are also buying based on price. Cheap beer is that way due to mass production and ingredients. Therefore lower “quality” translates to lower price. Homebrew is made with quality ingredients and rarely do we use rice to get our sugars. So by volume it’s more expensive (even scaled) then regular beer and the ingredients are better, which lets us consistently get higher alcohol, and more flavor.

Now look at the more expensive commercial examples and you will see they have higher alcohol. They also have higher taste.

 

[verboten]

Yes

 

[kh54s10]

ABV is ABV. Look at your recipe and see what the ABV should be or calculate the actual ABV from OG and FG, then compare to the number on the can or bottle...

 

[eric19312]

To me Light American Lager is a more challenging style than double IPA. The beer is supposed to be low on flavor, not too filling, session strength ABV...all designed to make it enjoyable to drink a bunch of them, with or without a wide variety of foods. My attempts at the style ... I think I’ve tried about 5 times in 180 batches...have come out ok but not up to standard set by commercial examples such as Budweiser. Made nice beers don’t get me wrong, following some great advice here and elsewhere on the inter webs...but just not hitting that target. If I amp up the hops like a Pivo Pils they are better tasting for sure but still the beer under this hops is noticeably (to me) inferior. I’m willing to consider the need is to go down the low oxygen brewing rabbit hole to get these right but that would require pretty major changes I’m not inclined to pursue...partly because...

On the other hand I make pale ales and IPAs and DIPA and Brut IPA which all are as good as or surpass many commercial examples of the styles. I think home brew scale permits some techniques such as hop bursting that are more challenging on commercial systems. Nothing is needed to make these beers come out great that isn’t achievable on a pretty basic home brew system. Hardest part might be closed transfer to purged kegs but at least some people manage that fermenting in plastic buckets and I’ve got the process down.

I suspect my ability to make delicious hoppy ales is preventing me from getting the experience to turn out equally high quality light lagers...why make another batch of just ok beer when I can easily make something great?

 

[kevin58]

What off the shelf brands are you drinking? What homebrew ABV's are you comparing them to?