Big Brew from extract

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mbecks

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I want to brew a beer that's up to hopefully 10 percent. I'm wondering if I could use two cans of extract and the amount of sugar for each one, but only the amount of water for one can then pitch both packets of yeast. would this work?
 
You might hit 10% but you'd be adding 4.4lbs of sugar to your brew. I don't know if this is a great idea.

Making high gravity beers from prehopped extract kits can get spendy depending on where you live.

Take a look at the Cooper's Russian Imperial Stout recipe.

1.7kg Stout beer kit
1.7kg Dark Ale beer kit
1.7kg Lager beer kit
1kg Dextrose

This is made up to 20 litres and pitched with all 3 yeast packs (rehydrated previously). Cooper's says that this will get to 9 or 10%.

At my LHBS it would cost me about $72 to buy the ingredients for this recipe.(Still a little cheaper than buying the "cheapest" domestic stuff where I live).
 
That much sugar can be typical for a few styles, like big belgians, or some of America's most famous high gravity artisan beers, eg Colt 45, Schlitz...

Making a 10% extract beer as a beginner is a good way to get a beer that's half as good for twice the price.
 
Any ideas how to make this turn out good and not just be an expensive batch of poor beer. I'm not interested in all grain brewing so that suggestion wont work. What if I use all spray malt?
 
I would suggest looking in the recipe section of the site for some extract brews. If you want to try a recipe without breaking the bank make a half batch, that what I do a lot of the time when experimenting with new styles or ingredients. That way if you don't like it that's less beer to drink/give away. You can make some high abv beers using extract very easy, of course you might need some specialty grains and different hops or stuff like that depending on what beer you wanna make.
 
Trial and error your recipe through a calculator on Brewers Friend or something similar. I've had some success doing this. You can play with all kinds of different types of ingredients and their amounts and come right out where you want.
 
awesome. thanks for the advice guys. I was losing hope in this site it seems when i ask a question a lot of answers i get are "dont do it" or "you can do it if you want bad beer" rather then creative ideas to experiment with.
 
mbecks said:
awesome. thanks for the advice guys. I was losing hope in this site it seems when i ask a question a lot of answers i get are "dont do it" or "you can do it if you want bad beer" rather then creative ideas to experiment with.

Recently we decided we wanted to brew an extract IPA from "scratch" and we had a few ideas on OG, ABV, IBUs, hop preference etc. We looked at examples online and also asked our local home brew store for suggestions. We then dumped our ingredients into the calculator on Brewers Friend and added, subtracted and tweaked until we got the numbers we wanted. Since it was an extract batch it wasn't terribly complicated since if you've brewed a few extract brews you know what basic elements that have to be present. The calculator helps you figure out what affect more or less grains, fermenters, hops, yeast and water have on your target measurements. Just make sure you pick the right yeast for the job. Good luck!
 
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