Alcohol

[Freezestat]

New to the brewing scene. Just want to know what determines the brew's alcohol level. Not looking to go overboard, but would like to be in the 5-7% range. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Keg: Autumn Amber Ale
Fermenter: Gold??

 

[marubozo]

Alcohol content determined by a relatively simple concept. It's how much sugar you start with and then how much sugar you're left with after fermentation. So, most of the time the higher the gravity the recipe, the greater alcohol content potential. Of course, it isn't as simple as that because other factors come into play such as the attenuation of the yeast and so on.

But for sake of keeping it simple, the more sugar you have available for the yeast to eat, the more alcohol they will generally produce.

To do a quick calculation on your own, you can simply take: (starting gravity - final gravity) x 131. This will give you a good estimate of what your beer has in terms of alcohol content.

So if you had an OG of 1.060 and a FG of 1.014, you'd have (1.060 - 1.014) * 131 = 6.03% ABV.

 

[Freezestat]

Thank you for the help. I have been reading a lot and really loving the hobby.

 

[a10t2]

For a quick and dirty approximation, you can just divide the OG in "points" by 10. So a 1.045 beer will probably be around 4.5%, a 1.055 beer around 5.5%, etc.

 

[Zamial]

... http://www.rooftopbrew.net/abv.php

enter in the gravities and hit submit.

 

[lumpher]

depends on what you use: dme, lme, or grain. 5% is about 10 lbs grain, 6.6 lbs lme, or 6 lbs dme. as you add specialty grains to extract, it goes up, of course. it varies a little, but that's a good rule of thumb.