Higher ABV

[bushman9995]

How do you increase your alcohol level in your batch? I have heard adding more sugars raises this level, but I'm unsure if you must add more hops as well.

 

[fermentinginpa]

Depends on the recipe, the beer you are trying to brew and how much higher you want the alcohol to be. The basic answer is you need more fermentable sugars in your wort for the yeast to feed off of. That can come from actually adding sugar or adding more grain/malt.

 

[SoonerDoc]

Boosting the fermentables will change the taste. Yes, you should adjust the hops as well. You can do all this, but it won't be the same. Your best bet is to find a recipe with the %ABV you want.

 

[DonMagee]

Boosting the fermentables will change the taste. Yes, you should adjust the hops as well. You can do all this, but it won't be the same. Your best bet is to find a recipe with the %ABV you want.

This!

Brew a recipe for the taste and not the ABV. If you try to take a beer and up it's ABV it will no longer be the same beer. So find some good tasting kit/recipe for beers with high ABV, but don't worry yourself on how to boost the ABV on a existing recipe or kit.

 

[rklinck]

How do you increase your alcohol level in your batch? I have heard adding more sugars raises this level, but I'm unsure if you must add more hops as well.

You don't. If you are interested in getting something that tastes like beer with a high alcohol content, go to the convenient store and buy a bottle of Colt 45 (or any other malt liquor). I'm kidding (kind of). Why do you want to boost the alcohol? Why not focus on making a beer that tastes good? To make a beer that has higher alcohol content, you have to make a lot of changes to balance it out. Of course, the beer will still be stronger (there is now way to make a 8% abv beer that tastes like a 5% abv).

 

[bobot]

I know perfectly well why you'd like a beer with a nice alcohol punch. The last extract brew I made had an OG of 1.074, and fermented down to around 1.018. If my math is correct, this equals a little bit over 7% ABV.
I actually used an online beer recipe calculator, and kept increasing the extract amounts until I achieved an ABV to my liking. I guessed at the amount of hops, and presented the recipe here for critique. I altered the recipe according to the advice of HomeBrewTalk gurus, and will bottle it this weekend. (It smells awesome!) FYI: I ended up using around 9 Lbs. LME, 1 Lb. DME, and 7 oz. hops.
I will absolutely report back about the finished results!

 

[bushman9995]

Sounds good! That is what I am looking for around 6 to 7 abv. I will probably do what you said add a little bit more sugars to my recipe and adjust fire as needed.

 

[bobot]

Sounds good! That is what I am looking for around 6 to 7 abv. I will probably do what you said add a little bit more sugars to my recipe and adjust fire as needed.

fire?
Are we on the same page, here?

 

[RonPopeil]

hops/ibu's are effected more by how much unfermented sugar is left behind. if you're adding table sugar, dextrose or other easily fermented sugars you won't get much "body" or points on your FG because of it's easy fermentability but you will get a good boost in ABV. the only need for more hops in this situation would be to smooth out any alcoholic flavors.

ymmv

 

[DonMagee]

I just wanted to clarify. I wasn't trying to say there are not great beers in the 7+ ABV range. In fact some of my favorites are in that range (I love russian imperial stouts). But you can't just take a recipe, add some sugar and call it a day. You can make a high gravity beer based on a low gravity beer, but you are still essentially trying to make a new recipe.

My suggestion if you are trying to do this is look at the gravity to ibu ratio and scale to keep the same ratio.

So if you had a beer with a OG of 1.045 and IBU's of 25 and you upped the OG to 1.055 you would need to increase the IBU's to somewhere around 30 (hopefully doing this evenly with your hop schedule and not just the bittering addition). Of course you also then have to keep in mind the percentages of base malt to specialty malts. If you just increase hops and base malt (or extract) you are going to have much less specialty malts (by total percent) and that is going to directly impact the taste of the beer.

So all in all it's just as complex and trying to build a new recipe from scratch.

 

[RIC0]

If your lucky you can find a recipe that is easy to up the ABV and stick with it. This is what I do with my Silly Scottish Ale. I add 1 lb of Amber DME and .5 lb of table sugar to the recipe and it gives it a good kick in the ABV and still comes out tasting good. I don't make this a habit with other brews.

as others said just find a brew that is already high in alc and brew it, keep in mind the higher the ABV the more it's going to cost.