Low Alcohol Blues

I recently started doing canned kits, prior to this I was doing wort in a bag kits.
The guy at the brew shop told me to put ldme in the kit instead of dextrose to make a better beer.

My first kit I added 2lb of ldme & 1lb of dextrose to the 1.8 kg canned kit og 1.044 and at 4 wks I had an fg of 1.014 giving me 3.9% abv.

Second kit I used 1kg of amber dme and 200g of dextrose added to 1.9 kg canned kit og 1.042 and at 4 wks the fg was 1.015 giving me 3.5 abv.

Am I not adding enough fermentables? I am not trying to make rocket fuel I just want to be around 5%

 

Use DME to get your OG around 1.055 or so. You can calculate how much you need since one pound of DME increases your OG by about 0.046 in one gallon (so 5 gallons would be increased by about 0.009).

 

Looking at those numbers, do the cans have any malt at all? It seems you are getting all your ABV from your additions, at least in the first example.

Also, what exactly is "ldme"?

 

If the canned kit is LME that should be around 36 ppg, sugar and DME should both be around 44 ppg. For those 2 recipes in 5 gals you should have had in the 1.053-1.055 range. Probably one of two things, either you didn't measure your water accurately and were over, or all the ingredients were not mixed well with the top off water and the readings were inaccurate (a very common occurance).

 

The l in ldme is for light. Sorry, that is what it had on the package.

My fermentation bucket is graduated so I topped up to 23L. Maybe it is in the mixing?

 

If it is not mixed VERY well, the gravity reading can easily be off. If you have a certain amount of extract to the correct amount of water..... your gravity points will be as they are projected. If they are not, it is almost certainly a measuring error.

 

Well 23 L is 6 gallons, those recipes would yield beers in the mid 1.040's. So you are correct, you don't have enough fermentables. Either decrease your batch size to 5 gallons, or add another 1.25-1.5 lb of DME.

 

It's actually not unusual for kits to be relatively low alcohol. It makes them cheaper.

Use less water and you'll have a smaller batch oh higher ABV. You could add more fermentables, but then you need to jigger the hop amounts as well.

 

Very common to brew these kits as 19 liters to keep the bittering and flavor balanced, but increase the ABV.

Coopers Brew Enhancer one,dextrose and maltodextrin, and Coopers Brew Enhancer two, dextrose, maltodextrin and DME, are also used to increase the ABV and body.