Need advice before I add extra DME and sugar

[Erroneous]

Yesterday I brewed an AHS Arrogan Bastard clone. I did BIAB and hit very poor 40% efficiency (1.040 instead of 1.073). I tasted the starter and it tasted very light, so boiled up all the extra light DME I had (5.9 oz) and one pound of light brown sugar. While I know it should make good beer without it, I want there to be a higher malt character to match up with the 4voz of 11.7% chinook that was in the recipe.

Should I go ahead and add it to the fermenter once it is cooled or just see where it takes me?

 

[Hockeyhunter99]

it is your beer. add it if you want to. if you are looking for an EXACT clone of AB then i wouldn't. but since it might not turn out the way you planned anyway, go for it. you won't get a lot of malt character from the brown sugar and the extra light won't do much either. you will increase the ABV and tone down the hop character just barely. you will have a Heck of a Potent IPA though.


Let us know how it turns out

 

[Erroneous]

Hmmm...yeah it would be interesting either way. I got the oak cubes to go with it but I'm gonna skip them since it would probably be out of character.

Might not add it. The mash averaged at 151 so the sugar might dry it out too much and the DME isn't going to hardly add anything. Of course it would make for a new and interesting beer.

 

[deggenbe]

it can also throw off your bitterness by adding sugar or dme after too.

if you add dme, you can add some hops to it and boil it in water. but it depends on how much you'll be adding and how much space you got. tough call

 

[Yooper]

Why not boil up 3 pounds of DME in as little as water as possible, and add that? It can wait a few days if you need to buy some DME. Just boil it up, cool it and gently add it without splashing.

I'd skip the brown sugar, but I'd definitely up the malt to balance the high hopping rate.

 

[Erroneous]

Well I already added the brown sugar. Unfortunately i'm out of dme and i'm not going to travel to my out of the way lhbs. Well I'll see how it turns out, thanks for the input!

 

[BrewKnurd]

I'm with Yooper. Definitely think you're gonna want more malt in there. If you've made up your mind not to get some more DME and add it, so be it, but I think this beer is gonna be bordering on painful with your hop/malt ratio. Hope I'm wrong, tho!

 

[Erroneous]

Ok well I ended up adding the 1# of brown sugar and kegged it up a couple days ago. Have to say, not bad. Almost like a california common, maybe a little light in body (expected). FG of 0.998 so yeah, pretty dang attenuated. I get very little of the aroma and flavor from the chinook, maybe I took too long to cool it down or something. I'll have to review my notes.

Definitely not a SAB clone, but tasty nonetheless.