high alcohol beers

[lostboysbrew]

Hello all
I am looking to do a high alcohol beer. my plan is the run the primary like I normally do. I was then going to pitch high gravity yeast and keep throwing fermentables at it until it won't go any more. Looking in suggestions on this process and what fermentables I should use. I am not looking to add flavor just get the alcohol percentage up. Would like to try to get as close to 20 percent as I can.
Thanks again for all the help.

 

[a10t2]

I've done something similar: http://seanterrill.com/2009/02/19/batch-25/

The NB forum topic I link there has some suggestions, and also links to other resources.

 

[marc06]

Read the Utopia threads by Paul The Nurse

 

[Yooper]

I assume you're kegging. I just wanted to point out to anyone following along that this would not work with bottle conditioning.

 

[BillyGHusk]

I assume you're kegging. I just wanted to point out to anyone following along that this would not work with bottle conditioning.

could you please elaborate on this?

 

[Yooper]

could you please elaborate on this?

Certainly! Adding sugars to increase the ABV will work. When the yeast won't work anymore (generally at 9-11% ABV depending on strain), that means they are done. They will die from alcohol poisoning, basically. It's not an issue if you're kegging. But if you add priming sugar to bottle condition, the yeast won't be able to eat the fresh sugar. That's what causes carbonation- the yeast eating the priming sugar. If the yeast are overwhelmed from the alcohol level, and stop fermenting the beer, they won't be able to carbonate the beer either.

I don't do this with beer- I'm not a "big" beer maker as a rule. But I do it often with wine. To make a high ABV sweet wine, you keep adding sugar until the yeast says "No mas!" and additional sugar won't be fermented. You can then sweeten it as desired.

In a beer, you can stop adding fermentables when the yeast is finished. But finished means finished, and then won't then come back alive and bottle carbonate for you.

 

[lostboysbrew]

Yes we are going to keg it. We had a beer get to just under 11% on normal yeast. We plan on pitching a high gravity yeast which will get us above 15%, we are just unsure of what type of sugars to throw at it. We were thinking about the next additiion being a small boil of DME and throw that in and pitch the high gravity as the first round has already gotten it close to 10%.....and then from there just throw table sugar at it. However not sure how much DME to go with because we dont want to get caught above 1.030 as we have found thats when beers are to "Sweet"........any ideas??????

 

[a10t2]

I guess I forgot to ask: are you doing AG or extract? You could supplement with some extract, but given the number of people who have problems getting even average-gravity extract beers to attenuate well, I think you'd want the bulk of your fermentables to come from a long, low-temperature mash. For 20% ABV, you probably want an OG of about 1.17 for an FG of 1.025. I'd target a ~1.13 wort and make up the rest with good old table sugar for a secondary fermentation. Adding some Beano when you pitch the yeast could help with fermentability if you do have to use some extract.

You'll need to make a massive starter - two smack packs in a 1.5 gal on a stirplate, or two gallons if you're just shaking it. Or pitch the entire slurry from a ~1.040 beer.

I wouldn't worry about using a high-gravity yeast; I think at the alcohol level you're talking about it's a distinction without a difference. Just be prepared to rack the beer onto an entire fresh yeast cake from something else once the original pitch craps out. FWIW that 22% beer was the only one I've ever had to re-yeast; I've done batches at 14.5%, 13.8%, 12.5%, 12.0%, and 10.8% with just a single pitch, and none of those used the high-gravity strain.

 

[ksbrain]

a10t2 that is an inspirational story. I like your approach. I did a very big beer once that only ended up at 17.7% (I was shooting for 20%). I did incremental feedings with a new pitch of yeast at each feeding. I started with US-05, then for the next yeast used champagne yeast, with WLP099 for the grand finale. But I like the idea of racking onto a fresh yeast cake each time, and storing the high gravity wort for feedings. I did a long boil each time I did a feeding, and it was very time consuming.

 

[lostboysbrew]

It is a partial, and our initial wort started around ~1.10. We wanted higher, but didn't get there. We are about to get the second round going, we planned on pitching a High Grav yeast but should we pitch a champagne first then the high grav later??

Our plan is 3lb of DME for the next addition followed by additions of sugar after that settles down. Would you recommend more DME or multiple additions of DME?? Our initial yeast pitch was from our original IPA, just about a full batch of yeast. We want to avoid racking out onto a new cake just because we want to avoid issues with sanitation, we kind of dont want to keep "moving" it...........

So recommended amount of DME??? also, multiple installments of DME?? Use champagne yeast first, and high grav second??