General Sugar question

[Zwan05]

I, like many other received my first kit recently, after a couple years of wanting to get into beer brewing i finally did! So i have the basic kit set up going on. I got a coopers Australian Pale Ale kit with it. With the instructions provided by my local brew supplier and reading many articles online and these forums everything seems to be interchangeable in regards to methods. Am i wrong for thinking that there are a million ways and to not read into it too much and to just experiment? Some of this stuff seems to specific for a beginner, sometimes too specific sometime not specific enough its very overwhelming. My first question is specific to my first brew.... I boiled the water and the instructions said never to shy away from extra sugar and that i could use honey so i did. Then i boiled for 20 min to pasteurize removed added the kit and 2lbs of malted barley then boiled for 15 for minutes. So my question is did i do this right first off and how much is too sugar? My goal after a couple of brews is to be able to get a very high % of alcohol in which ever brew i desire. Also i cant seem to find any articles specific to Australian Pale ale so idk how long to leave it in the ferment-er. I was thinking one week then bottle then 1 week room temp then 2 weeks cold conditions?

 

[McGarnigle]

First, the problem with honey is that it's delicate, and boiling it will lessen the honey flavor. You'll get alcohol from it, but it may have been better just to use (cheaper) sugar.

You mention boiling "2 lbs of malted barley" and boiling that. Do you mean actual grains as opposed to extract? You shouldn't boil grains.

How much sugar is too much? I dunno... certainly if anywhere near half your fermentables are sugar, that's more than most of us would want. Wanting to get as high % alcohol as possible could be the problem. Sugar is a cheap way to add booze, but not the best way.

Timing: more like 3 weeks in fermenter plus 3 weeks in the bottle at room temp. I'd say don't worry about cold conditioning.

 

[Zwan05]

Yea it was an extract fine powder.... if i use cane sugar can i just throw it in there? what are better ways to add booze?

 

[philrose]

theres a podcast on the brewing network called "oz sparkling ale" that will fully immerse you in the style. You can also get a back issue of BYO magazine on the BYO website that describes sparkling ale. Sparkling ale is different than Australian Pale ale, but much of the info is still applicable.

Coopers kits are meant to be pretty standard. If it was my beer I'd do a two week primary. The yeast that they package those kits with are pretty resilient and will withstand slightly higher fermentation temperatures for the newbies, but I stil would try to keep it under 70. Extra time in the fermenter's goal is to fully ferment the beer and allow the yeast to re-absorb off flavors.

Then siphon the beer in a clean, scratchless, sanitized bucket. This will leave the bulk of the yeast behind in the original fermenter. Bottle from this extra vessel.

Welcome to HBT, good luck with your beer!

 

[McGarnigle]

Yea it was an extract fine powder.... if i use cane sugar can i just throw it in there? what are better ways to add booze?

The best way to add alcohol is to add more extract. You can add cane sugar, but this won't add flavor. It might make your beer cidery (big arguments about this). It will make your beer light and a bit thin if too much is used.

I think the Cooper's kits use 3 lbs extract with 2 lbs sugar. Enough people have brewed them that I'm not going to say you can't do that. I would advise against adding more sugar without also adding more extract. Or just add less water: make a 3 gallon batch using the exact same recipe.

 

[bohdan987]

if you add too much of sugar your beer will taste like crap, you have to ballance a malty grain flavor with hopps bitternes and alcohol taste.
you can "get away" with alot more in dark beers than a light collored. one time i was making a lager "baltica" clone so i added a 2 extra cups of corn sugar since it was a dark beer you can't nottice a extra alcohol from sugar.
i did same to a "double diamont" clone that was alot lighter in color and you can taste way to mutch alcohol from sugar, it was drinkable.
alcohol that is fermented from a corn or cane sugar has a destinctive smell and taste alot different than from grain, you have to mask it or balance it with different smells and flawors in the beer. its alot easyer with a dark beers.
just remember, you are not making a "moon shane" here but a beer!

 

[PT Ray]

The kits are really made to be dumped in a pail with a kilo/2.2lbs of sugar, a couple quarts of boiling water and then topped off to 5 gallons.

If you haven't seen any of Craig's videos, that is exactly how he brews and loves doing it that way.

From there you can upgrade the kit by using malt extract instead of sugar and so on. However, I don't feel there is a lot of room with a kit before you're better off with just building a recipe starting with plain extract.

I've come to believe that sugar is recommended because it's cheap and it provides that lighter flavor that most people are familiar with. Something that is going to sell kits.

 

[david_42]

High ABV beers need to be designed. You can't just jack the alcohol up on a beer and get anything decent. Also, fermenting high ABV brews is much more difficult that moderate brews.

 

[bohdan987]

High ABV beers need to be designed. You can't just jack the alcohol up on a beer and get anything decent. Also, fermenting high ABV brews is much more difficult that moderate brews.

+1, like i sad before you need a ballance of malt,hopps and alcohol.

 

[lady_brewer]

Also, from my understanding, honey takes longer to ferment out, so it is probably going to take longer to be ready than you are thinking. Might want to pop into the mead forum to see what they have to say about it...