Strong beer/Ice beer

[Noz03]

So I am a massive fan of strong beers, especially Belgian style, I also tried a few ice beers lately (eg. Schneiderweisse Eisbock from Germany) which were also amazing and now I'm thinking what I could possibly do to make my own strong beer. Either by increasing sugar, decreasing water, freeze distilling it, or some combination of these. Would be nice to have something around 12% to start, or maybe make several versions of different strengths from a single batch?

So has anyone ever tried anything like this? What method did you use to give it the strengh? And what style of beer works well for this?

I know there are some special beer kits for strong belgian beers but unfortunately not available in my country and I also think it is more fun/creative to try and customize the recipe or a regular kit

 

[m00ps]

The actual making of an Esibock would be stupidly difficult at a homebrewing level IMO. Youd need to make so many estimations on how much gets frozen off and the freezing point of your particular beer, given its OG and FG before freezing. Basically a Complete shot in the dark

If a +10% beer is what you want to make, I would looks at large (10% or more by weight) simple sugar additions and a yeast with a high alcohol tolerance. WLP090 and WLP099 come to mind, but a lot of belgian yeasts can take things upwards of 10% easily. My last Belgian Strong Ale finished at nearly 10.5% from an OG of just 1.085. Its very drinkable, the abv is entirely hidden by yeast eters. You just need to know how to brew it right

 

[Yooper]

Lots of people make Eisbock at home- you don't have to do a ton of calculations.

https://byo.com/bock/item/593-eisbock-brew-the-beer-money-cant-buy is a decent article on it.

Freeze concentration isn't difficult, if you have the freezer capability.

 

[Noz03]

The actual making of an Esibock would be stupidly difficult at a homebrewing level IMO. Youd need to make so many estimations on how much gets frozen off and the freezing point of your particular beer, given its OG and FG before freezing. Basically a Complete shot in the dark

If a +10% beer is what you want to make, I would looks at large (10% or more by weight) simple sugar additions and a yeast with a high alcohol tolerance. WLP090 and WLP099 come to mind, but a lot of belgian yeasts can take things upwards of 10% easily. My last Belgian Strong Ale finished at nearly 10.5% from an OG of just 1.085. Its very drinkable, the abv is entirely hidden by yeast eters. You just need to know how to brew it right

Well I wouldn't need to get it perfect, couldn't I just for example freeze 2L of 7% alcohol beer, then let it drip into a 1L container to have roughly double the alcohol/flavour, minus a few % loss from the process? It'll probably have a big range somewhere between 10 and 13% but thats all fine with me.

By the way, how high % can most standard ale yeasts get up to?

 

[Jwin]

I did a eisPA a few months ago. I had a 8.5g batch, keged 5 and froze 3.5
I just froze it in the purged fermenter(I transferred the 5g with co2) sten bottled straight from the spiggot of the spiedel with a short length of hose. I used carb drops and reputched some so5 in each bottle. At this level, i wasnt worried with gravity. It was just fun for science sake. It took 3 days in a deep freeze to get a good chunk in there. My experince was much of the ice formed on the top. I had no issues pulling from the spigot. Ymmv.

You can also step feed sugar to a nearly finished beer. That will get you booze. Eis gets you a better flavor imho. Ive never tasted anything like the eisPA but it was/is great. Taking the final bottles to the family party tomorrow

 

[ArkotRamathorn]

Well I wouldn't need to get it perfect, couldn't I just for example freeze 2L of 7% alcohol beer, then let it drip into a 1L container to have roughly double the alcohol/flavour, minus a few % loss from the process? It'll probably have a big range somewhere between 10 and 13% but thats all fine with me.

By the way, how high % can most standard ale yeasts get up to?

Most stop around 12%-ish. Theres definitely some wiggle room and depends on a lot of factors deciding if they go past or stop early.

My first question would be, do you want to make a true eisbock then I'd follow what others have done for eisbocks and similar style beers. I would say its probably easier to make a 10% beer straight up, build the recipe to hit that range, icing a 5% up to 10% you will lose so much volume. If you cant lager then just grab one of the hybrid ale yeasts that work ok in the mid 50s range.

If you want to make a truly beastly "beer" in the 20% range its probably less labor intensive to ice a beer than doing the step feeding they use to force ale yeasts past their normal ranges. I've iced a couple times for fun basically since something about the beer was off and it was either toss it or ice it, they were good practice batches for the icing process (they were much better after icing and aging than they were straight up).

I would start with an already big beer and then begin to ice it. Any of the "big" beer styles, though keep in mind whatever the base beer will be much more intense on the other side after icing. Starting big allows for a larger end volume, less re-freezing to achieve desired abv. Its much more difficult to bottle condition and carbonate when you go over a certain number. I would never suggest to anyone to keg but if you can, kegging then bottling off the keg would be much easier, or just serve it flat (theres other options with adding fresh yeast and such but its sometimes a shot in the dark).

 

[Noz03]

Most stop around 12%-ish. Theres definitely some wiggle room and depends on a lot of factors deciding if they go past or stop early.

My first question would be, do you want to make a true eisbock then I'd follow what others have done for eisbocks and similar style beers. I would say its probably easier to make a 10% beer straight up, build the recipe to hit that range, icing a 5% up to 10% you will lose so much volume. If you cant lager then just grab one of the hybrid ale yeasts that work ok in the mid 50s range.

If you want to make a truly beastly "beer" in the 20% range its probably less labor intensive to ice a beer than doing the step feeding they use to force ale yeasts past their normal ranges. I've iced a couple times for fun basically since something about the beer was off and it was either toss it or ice it, they were good practice batches for the icing process (they were much better after icing and aging than they were straight up).

I would start with an already big beer and then begin to ice it. Any of the "big" beer styles, though keep in mind whatever the base beer will be much more intense on the other side after icing. Starting big allows for a larger end volume, less re-freezing to achieve desired abv. Its much more difficult to bottle condition and carbonate when you go over a certain number. I would never suggest to anyone to keg but if you can, kegging then bottling off the keg would be much easier, or just serve it flat (theres other options with adding fresh yeast and such but its sometimes a shot in the dark).

Yeah this is the direction I think I am going towards, maybe brew something around 9% and then freeze reduce it until I get the desired taste/strength. Now just trying to decide what style of beer to go with...

 

[ArkotRamathorn]

Yeah this is the direction I think I am going towards, maybe brew something around 9% and then freeze reduce it until I get the desired taste/strength. Now just trying to decide what style of beer to go with...

If you really liked the eisbock from Germany, starting with a base bock/doppelbock recipe is probably your best bet. If you can't lager, just go for a clean cool fermenting ale yeast and try to keep it in the mid 50s (I've had sucess with pitching slightly warm on 1007 German Ale yeast and chilling it down to 58F for the first couple days and leaving it for an addition 2 weeks at 55F).

The recipe database for bocks here on HBT have some good starting points, lots of munich, some pilsner and a pinch of caramunich with some noble hops is all you need. Wee heavy/higher abv scottish style ale, stronger than normal irish red, basically any strongly malty beer is a good first pick, I would avoid any of the styles that use a lot of hops simply from an economic stand point (save the hops for other regular beers until you have an ice beer under your belt and wanna try a higher hopped ice beed).

 

[specharka]

Lots of people make Eisbock at home- you don't have to do a ton of calculations.



https://byo.com/bock/item/593-eisbock-brew-the-beer-money-cant-buy is a decent article on it.



Freeze concentration isn't difficult, if you have the freezer capability.

Awesome article, but I am a little confused about the fermentation schedule. It says that after lagering, the gravity will drop significantly, about 16 points.

How is this possible? I was under the impression that the purpose of lagering was to drop the yeast out of suspension and allow the beer to condition. I did not think even lager yeast could operate at near freezing temperatures.

 

[TrustyOlJohnson]

Making my Eisbock was easy.. the brew day was long though, only because I did a triple decoction.. when you are done in primary, rack to a bucket and set in the freezer.. skim a gallon worth of ice off ( I jus scoop it out with a sanitized strainer into a gallon jar until it is full), then rack to a bottling bucket, add priming sugar and bottle.. I removed a gallon of ice from a 5 gallon batch.. used the recipe from Jamil's Brewing Classic Styles I think.. "Steve's 50"