Please help me boost my beer kit.

[nelsonbaggins]

I just received a Brewers Best kit for Xmas, their Scottish Ale recipe, but it's ABV sits around the low end at ~3.5%. Anyone have any ideas what I could add to it to bring it more in line with a classic Scotch Ale? I don't need to push it too far into winter warmer/wee heavy territory, but I'd like to get the ABV over 5% at least. Here's the ingredients list so far:

FERMENTABLES
3.3 lb. Amber LME
1 lb. Amber DME
SPECIALTY GRAINS
4 oz. Caramel 60L
4 oz. Smoked
4 oz. Chocolate
1 oz. Roasted Barley
HOPS
.5 oz. Bittering Cascade
.5 oz. Aroma Cascade
YEAST
1 Sachet Windsor

Maybe I should add some Maris Otter? If I'm throwing in more malt then I should match it with more hops, so perhaps some Williamette, Goldings or Fuggles? (I love me some Fuggles!) Just looking for friendly suggestions.

 

[BigEd]

Make the kit the way it's designed and then brew something bigger next time is my suggestion. This question (boosting alcohol content) gets asked all the time and while the simplest thing is to just add more fermentable ingredients this will cause an in-balance in the recipe. For the beer to taste like it should many of the other aspects of the recipe would have to be altered as well. To make a crude analogy, you can put a bigger engine in a car to boost horsepower but now will the transmission, brakes and tires be adequate? Enjoy the Scottish ale for what it is and plan for a bigger brew next time around.

 

[ReverseApacheMaster]

You could just double the whole recipe.

 

[yodalegomaster]

just add a pound of table sugar, you will not taste it. sugar = alcohol simple

 

[fineexampl]

just add a pound of table sugar, you will not taste it. sugar = alcohol simple

BS...more LME or DME.

double or triple the DME and double the hops.

 

[D0ug]

I would take the advice of not tinkering with the kit, especially if you haven't done a lot of them. They are pretty well balanced as designed.

How ever, I have found that I can get away with adding another 1-2 pounds of DME with out throwing the recipe off too badly.

Another 2 pounds of amber DME and 1 oz. of the fuggles in with the boiling hops and you should be pretty close to the BU:GU ratio you were at before you modified the recipe and be at about 5.5% abv when it's done.

You could probably get away with just adding the extract and not the hops and still be kinda close, but on the maltier side of where this beer should be, but it a scottish aleright? they're not to hoppy to begin with.

My two cents,

Good luck and happy brewing!

ps table sugar can throw really weird flavors in beer, don't do it.

 

[vast_reaction]

I had a few minutes, so I threw your recipe into BeerSmith. I set the style as a Scottish Light 60 Schilling, and it's pretty much in style.

If you add another 2lbs of Amber DME, making it 3 total, your OG goes up to 1.054, giving you a little over 5% ABV. If you bump the Cascade up to .75oz at 60 minutes, and another .75 at 5 mins, you're in style for IBU's at 20 also. If you can't get any more Cascade before you brew, just do .75 at 60 and .25 at 5. It won't really be proper style anymore, but you might like it.

If you can get your hand on some specialty grains, add another 2oz of each, but just another 1oz Roasted Barley.

 

[yodalegomaster]

ps table sugar can throw really weird flavors in beer, don't do it.

Where in the world did you get this "prized gem of myth" simple sugar is added to many beers Including "Pliny the Elder" which is considered to be one of the best beer made, it has 5% table sugar. Sugar doesn't add any flavor just alcohol.

 

[D0ug]

Sorry, just came across a lot of threads claiming cidery flavors can be thrown by table sugar.
Maybe it fits for some styles, but just throwing it in doesn't seem to work well for a lot folks.

 

[Revvy]

Make the kit the way it's designed and then brew something bigger next time is my suggestion. This question (boosting alcohol content) gets asked all the time and while the simplest thing is to just add more fermentable ingredients this will cause an in-balance in the recipe. For the beer to taste like it should many of the other aspects of the recipe would have to be altered as well. To make a crude analogy, you can put a bigger engine in a car to boost horsepower but now will the transmission, brakes and tires be adequate? Enjoy the Scottish ale for what it is and plan for a bigger brew next time around.

+1,000

I agree, it's not about just slopping a bunch of stuff together, it's really about how everything works together.

If you want a higher abv beer, then make your next kit higher. It really isn't about the booze, but the flavor that most of us care about. We're not brewing to get whacked, but to make great tasting beer.

For example a mild IS a great tasting beer, despite it's low alcohol content. Because there's not a high alcohol backbone, you can really get some nice subtle flavors it it.

Besides, Beer recipes are a balance...and if you add to one variable, that will affect other parts of it...For example if you decide to raise the gravity of a balanced beer...a beer where the hops balance out the sweetness...and you raise the maltniness of it without alaso balancing the hops, then your beer may end up being way too cloyingly sweet. Or if you just add sugar willy nilly it could become overly dry, or cidery.

SO I would just brew this, and enjoy it, don't worry if you get buzzed or not, and make your next batch as high as you want.

My take on this is that there is a difference between true experimentation and throwing things together "willy nilly." I have noticed on here is that a lot of noobs think what they are doing is experimentation, when in reality they are just throwing a bunch of stuff against the wall and hoping it sticks.

Throwing a bunch of stuff in your fermenter and seeing what you get at the end, and ending up making an "is my beer ruined" thread is not the same thing as experimenting.

To me, in order to experiment truly, you have to have an understanding of the fundamentals. You have to know how the process works somewhat. You have to have an understanding of how different ingredients or processes affect the final product. You may even need to know, or at least understand something about beer styles, and what goes into making one beer a Porter and another a pale ale. And where your concoction will fall on the continuoum.


To me it's like cooking or even Jazz. But going back to the cooking analogy. Coming up with a balanced and tasty recipe takes some understanding of things...just like cooking...dumping a cup of salt will more than likely ruin a recipe...so if you cook, you KNOW not to do that...it's the same with brewing...you get an idea with experience and looking at recipes, brewing and playing with software how things work..what flavors work with each other, etc...

That to me is the essence of creating...I have gotten to a point where I understand what I am doing, I get how ingredients work or don't work with each other, so I am not just throwing a bunch of stuff together to see what I get.

I have an idea of what I want it to taste like, and my challenge then is to get the right combination of ingredients to match what is in my head. That's also pretty much how I come up with new food recipes as well.

You'll get there....a LOT sooner, if you focus on the fundamentals, and get your processes in order...rather than just playing around.

You'll also save more money that way.....

 

[samc]

You should note than many commercial breweries will produce a regular strength beer (Arrogant Bastard for example) and then do a souped up version (Double AB). It's rarely the same beer with more Alcohol.

I'd agree with brewing as is and drink your beer with a shot of Scotch on the side!

 

[nelsonbaggins]

Thanks for all the responses! My goal is to get where Revvy is at to where I understand the various flavor profiles different malts, hops, and yeast bring to the table so I can devise my own recipes instead of copying others verbatim. I have actually been interested in brewing a "small" beer, ever since I read an article about about some monks who drink their flagship ale with dinner, but brew their own special small beer to drink throughout the day, since they consume something like 8 glasses a day and need to stay alert enough for their other duties. I'll just put forth my best effort to really nail this one and then move on from there.

My only worry is based on previous experience: I used a Brewers Best kit once before and it didn't turn out too hot. But it was my first time brewing so hopefully my technique has improved since then and I'll be able to make the most of this kit.

 

[Revvy]

Thanks for all the responses! My goal is to get where Revvy is at to where I understand the various flavor profiles different malts, hops, and yeast bring to the table so I can devise my own recipes instead of copying others verbatim. I have actually been interested in brewing a "small" beer, ever since I read an article about about some monks who drink their flagship ale with dinner, but brew their own special small beer to drink throughout the day, since they consume something like 8 glasses a day and need to stay alert enough for their other duties. I'll just put forth my best effort to really nail this one and then move on from there.

My only worry is based on previous experience: I used a Brewers Best kit once before and it didn't turn out too hot. But it was my first time brewing so hopefully my technique has improved since then and I'll be able to make the most of this kit.

When someone posts a "what's my next step" thread, I usually post about my progression, not that I think it's the "right way" but it kind of overlaps both technique and knowledge.

If anything it will give you an overview of different methodolgies in brewing.

The next step many make for cooper's style kits is to using an extract with steeping grains kit/ They are better quality and the steeping grains give the beer bigger depth of flavor than a straight extract beer.

After I did some of those, I started playing around with non kit recipes from this site, and I also started playing around with recipe formulations....I started using free online recipe calculators like this one, Beer Calculus . homebrew recipe calculator which helped me understand how the different ingredients affect each other. FIrst I started typing in these recipes and playinig with them to see what a pound of such and such grain did to the SG of the beer, or how this hop made the beer more or less bitter.

At the same time I started reading more and more about the different ingredients I was using....I found that googling the names helped get me a lot of info on them, plus reading articles and catalogs and books about it.

The BJCP style guide was a big help too, learning the numbers, OG, FG, IBU, SRM's ranges for different styles. BJCP Style Guidelines

Next I formulated a couple of my own recipes and played around with that, making them better or different.

My next step after that was transfering some of my recipes from extract to partial mashes, where I would get the largest amount of my fermentables from mashing my own grains, and then adding some extract.

Around this time I also played with harvest my own yeast, both washing and bottle harvesting.

After that I made a cooler and started doing 2.5 gallon All grain brews, converting those Partial Mashes to All grain, and brewing them on my stove top...

After that I got a turkey fryer and wort chiller so I can do full volume boils and started brewing all grain, brewing some of the recipes on here, and creating my own...

I also still do some extract with grain recipes, Partial Mashes, and 2.5 gallon stove top brewing, depending on my mood.

This winter I tried my hand at brewing lagers instead of ales, since I discovered a few that I like and was able to have some form of temp control....

I also tried my hand at brewing some strong ales, and playing with different yeasts, then my usually clean ones, trying yeast that added their own character to the beers.

A good thing to do is to try brewing Single Malt and Hop Beers where you brew very simple beers to get an idea of how different hops work with them, or different yeasts...it's a really good way to again get an idea how, like cooking, diffeent ingredients play off of each other.

As you can see, I didn't just jump from one technique like extract to all grain, I also tried to learn as much as I could about ingredients and recipe creations as well.....An I also tried to perfect my processes, like bottling, yeast harvesting, things like that...

I still have a long way to go, there's a ton of stuff to learn, different ways to brew to explore, and new styles to try and brew as well...

There's a huge amount of things you can do in this hobby.

The biggest thing that helped me was like I said using software and tyoing established recipes even the ones of the kits I brewed into Beer calculus. Also introduction in the byo 150 clone recipe special edition helped me understand immensely. Also books like radical brewing and Designing great beers help as well.

I hope this helps