I need help please

[martafoos]

ok.. So my boyfriend and i have been brewing and we are on our 6th homebrew, and frankly i think we are doing something wrong. We are going for the bigger beers higher alcohol gravity hoppy ones.
We started our homebrewing with the standard brewers best and it turned out at a 4% alcohol content... not bad. eh.. whatever... We wanted more so we kept increasing our game a bit stray from recipes t make our own..a lb of crystal malt here... added hops there. you know...
We finally made the same recipe with added grains inw hich we decided to instead of steeping them for 20minutes as before steeped them for almost an hour and 20 minutes... then we added 6lbs of malt extratc instead of 5. Well wtf.... our starting gravity turned out to be 1.048!!!! ending gravity of 1.016. it would turn out to be a 3.46% beer???? what the hell?? what are we doing wrong? we were hoping to be in the 5% range. The beer is done fermenting... Is there anything we can do now to raise the alcohol content??? or are we fu**Ked help!
-mARTA

 

[Yooper]

Well, that actually calculates out to 4.2%, so it's better than 3.46% but not what you planning.

I would suggest maybe following a set recipe or two, until you're comfortable making changes. Just adding things (like a pound of crystal malt) without knowing the results may not give you what you're hoping for.

1.016 is a bit high for a FG for some beers- and that could be due to unfermentable sweet malts like crystal. Or it could be due to an underattenuating yeast.

Something simple like steeping grains longer didn't do anything to change the recipe- it's like making tea. Once you've extracted the color and flavor from the grains (20-30 minutes), all you're doing after that is wasting your time. Steeping for an hour will not give you anything that you didn't get in 20 minutes. So that's not what changed your recipe.

I'd let this beer go- a 4.2% beer that tastes good is nothing to sneeze at.

If you want a bigger, hoppier beer, you have several choices. One is to pick a style like that- maybe an American pale ale, or an IPA. Or if you like stouts, a bigger stout, for example. Then you'd have the hops and malt balanced, and predictable results in the flavor, color, and ABV. We have several recipes in the recipe database that are good, and you'd probably find one that you like.

 

[Bob]

What Yooper says.

I suspect that the OG reading so offensive to you is erroneous. Specifically, I suspect insufficient mixing of bitter wort and top-off water.

Like Yooper, I strongly suggest following set recipes and procedures until you get a few more brews under your belt. In order to successfully "wing it", you need a certain mastery of brewing; had you the appropriate mastery of the process, you wouldn't be asking these sorts of questions.

Where are you in PA? You probably have a homebrew club relatively local to you; clubs are founts of knowledge, with experienced brewers who love to pass on their experience.

Cheers,

Bob

 

[TheJadedDog]

I'm wondering if you are racking from your primary too soon and not giving your beers a chance to finish fermenting. I'd do as Yooper suggests and find a recipe that have the expected ABV you are looking for, then follow the recipe without making any changes, then let your beer do it's thing. Chances are you will get better results than just randomly altering ingredients.