How To Increase ABV of Smashing Pumpkin Ale?

[tjnowak]

I'm brewing the Smashing Pumpkin Ale by Northern Brewery as we speak:
http://www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/beerkits/SmashingPumpkinEX.pdf

My question is how would I increase the ABV of this beer? I've heard to increase the amount of fermentables, such as sugar I'm assuming. So would it work to add some brown sugar? I'm not sure where in the process I should add it. I'm guessing I would want it to dissolve, so would doing it at flame out be okay? I'm also unsure on how much I should add. Is there a way to tell, say 1 cup or brown sugar, might increase the ABV? Also, do I need to be concerd about the yeast at all if I'm doing this? Thanks for any help!

 

[Colorowdy]

Brown sugar will boost the abv and will dry your beer out a little.
I use 12 oz maple syrup with my pumpkin ale.

 

[tjnowak]

Good idea! At what point do you add it?

 

[tooldudetool]

Here is a copy of a post made by Calder in a similar thread:

There are lots of book and brewing programs (eg, Beersmith) that will tell you the added gravity content of a pound of different 'sugars', which will help you with this.

For reference: 1 lb of table sugar (and brown sugar, and candi sugar crystals) has 46 gravity points. That is, it will have a gravity of 1.046 when dissolved in 1 gallon of water, or 1.023 when dissolved in 2 gallons of water. If added to 5 gallons it will increase the gravity by .009, but you also need to account for the added volume from the liquid you dissolved it in. Example: If you dissolved 1 lb of sugar in 0.5 gallons of water you will have a gravity of 1.092. If you then add this to 5 gallons of 1.060 wort, you will have 32 gravity points to divide between the now 5.5 gallons; or an increase of .006.

1 lb of Corn sugar has 36 gravity points.

1 lb of Honey has (about) 33 gravity points (it varies).

Hope this helps! The sugar additions can be made at any time during the boil, however, saving it till the end will prevent it from affecting your hop utilization.

 

[Colorowdy]

Good idea! At what point do you add it?

I add the maple syrup at flameout. I also use it as priming sugar in this beer.

 

[tjnowak]

Definitely will research that further, sounds interesting. Do you end up getting a little of the maple syrup flavor too? Or does it mellow out a bit? I'm not a huge fan of maple syrup in general, but if it added just a hint I would think it would work well with a pumpkin beer

 

[Colorowdy]

It leaves little maple flavor and compliments the pimpkin well. My wife hates beer but will drink one of these on rare occasions.

 

[shawnstr71]

I just did my 1st pumpkin ale sat. (3rd batch of beer), and it was an all grain. I didn't add syrup becuz the recipe ( richards pumpkin ale- from this site) said it didn't add much to the final product. I added 60 oz.s of canned pumpkin, bakes at 200 degrees for 90 min.s. I added after the heatbreak. I got an O.G. of 1.052. However I have a **** ton of pumpkin in the fermenter and coming through the blow off. Think I will have to rack to a secondary for this batch. Crazy yeast activity too. Day 3 it is bubbling like every 3 sec.s and have dumped 1 gal out so far. I amped the amount of volume in my sparge. So I got about 6.5 gal.s in fermenter. Its all 1 big experiment! Lol