To add sugar or not, that is the question

[olotti]

Constructing my own DIPA recipe and am going for a hop focused, dry, very drinkeable DIPA in the realm of Hop Ranch, Heady or New Glarus Scream. Heres how it looks according to Beersmith.

8lb MO
8lbs 2 row
1 lb Carapils (5.6%)
1.0 lb dextrose (5.6%)

OG with sugar is 1.082 with a FG or 1.010. Mashing at 148deg for 90min with a 90 min boil. I'm at 16.8lbs of grain which is doable in my 10gal MLT. I'm just wondering is the sugar necessary in this beer if I'm mashing at 148? I also don't want it too dry, 1.008-9 is about as low as I'd like it to go if it overattenuates. Shooting for around 85-95IBUS and im still working on the hop combo. I'll prob pitch a giant starter of my washed wlp001 for this beer too.

 

[Redhawk96]

My experience is that you will probably need the sugar to get a 1.078 beer to attenuate down to 1.009, but there are alot of variables.

You can make a great beer either with the sugar, or without. I used to add honey post-boil on a lot of IPAs to get the alcohol and attentuation up, but for my system, I don't believe it is musch different taste wise than just putting more base grain in the mash.

 

[frazier]

Ya know, when I started out brewing, I wanted every batch to be perfect. And why not? Who sets out to brew a less-than-perfect batch? No one, that's who.

And yet - there are questions about your process that only you can answer. For example - my *ahem* award-winning stout was my 5th attempt at a stout. I had to learn things. Was it worth it? Absolutely!

I would say - make the best guess you can about the sugar, brew the beer, enjoy the heck out of it, and try to figure what to do different on the next attempt.

Cheers!

 

[olotti]

My experience is that you will probably need the sugar to get a 1.078 beer to attenuate down to 1.009, but there are alot of variables.

You can make a great beer either with the sugar, or without. I used to add honey post-boil on a lot of IPAs to get the alcohol and attentuation up, but for my system, I don't believe it is musch different taste wise than just putting more base grain in the mash.

I edited my post as I was playing with Beersmith, put the yeast attenuation back to 75-80% so the FG is now 1.010 with and increased OG and I upped the sugar, seems 1 lb is the popular choice when using sugar.

 

[Brettomomyces]

Constructing my own DIPA recipe and am going for a hop focused, dry, very drinkeable DIPA in the realm of Hop Ranch, Heady or New Glarus Scream. Heres how it looks according to Beersmith.

8lb MO
8lbs 2 row
1 lb Carapils (5.6%)
1.0 lb dextrose (5.6%)

OG with sugar is 1.082 with a FG or 1.010. Mashing at 148deg for 90min with a 90 min boil. I'm at 16.8lbs of grain which is doable in my 10gal MLT. I'm just wondering is the sugar necessary in this beer if I'm mashing at 148? I also don't want it too dry, 1.008-9 is about as low as I'd like it to go if it overattenuates. Shooting for around 85-95IBUS and im still working on the hop combo. I'll prob pitch a giant starter of my washed wlp001 for this beer too.

Sugar absolutely helps to get that dry finish with a beer this size, you could go up to 10% dextrose if you wanted. I just use plain table sugar, fwiw you won't notice an appreciable difference between dextrose/honey/sucrose when added to the boil. The added alcohol also adds some perception of body, so it won't come out super thin. I would recommend going at least 5% with the sugar and then see how you like it.

Pitch your huge starter, aerate really well, and try to control the fermentation temp as best you can. Big beers take off strong and can produce a lot of extra heat. If you have an oxygen system, giving it another 15 seconds or so at the 12-18 hour mark can help a lot.

 

[olotti]

Sugar absolutely helps to get that dry finish with a beer this size, you could go up to 10% dextrose if you wanted. I just use plain table sugar, fwiw you won't notice an appreciable difference between dextrose/honey/sucrose when added to the boil. The added alcohol also adds some perception of body, so it won't come out super thin. I would recommend going at least 5% with the sugar and then see how you like it.

Pitch your huge starter, aerate really well, and try to control the fermentation temp as best you can. Big beers take off strong and can produce a lot of extra heat. If you have an oxygen system, giving it another 15 seconds or so at the 12-18 hour mark can help a lot.

I'll prob keep the sugar at the level its at for now, as the recipe stands the beer's at 9.5% which is prob as big as I want to go for a DIPA in fact its prob bigger than I want so I may actually scale it down a bit, but I've had some DIPA's like Scream and Hop Ranch that were that big and you'd never taste it, so that's my goal. I use pure O2 with a wand for aeration worked real well for my RIS I made. When reoxygenating at the 12-18hr mark do you pull the blowoff tube even if its fermenting away, no harm in that I take it, and just hit it with O2 for what 60 sec?

 

[Brettomomyces]

I'll prob keep the sugar at the level its at for now, as the recipe stands the beer's at 9.5% which is prob as big as I want to go for a DIPA in fact its prob bigger than I want so I may actually scale it down a bit, but I've had some DIPA's like Scream and Hop Ranch that were that big and you'd never taste it, so that's my goal. I use pure O2 with a wand for aeration worked real well for my RIS I made. When reoxygenating at the 12-18hr mark do you pull the blowoff tube even if its fermenting away, no harm in that I take it, and just hit it with O2 for what 60 sec?

Cool, you got a wand! You could do like 30 seconds, don't need a ton of O2 at this point. The extra oxygen is useful because yeast are just finishing their first replication around 12 hours, so the O2 can be used by the new yeast. Totally fine to pull off the tube if it is fermenting away, there's so much carbon dioxide being created that it puts a positive pressure on the vessel that keeps stuff from getting in, same as how yeast starters are usually recommended to not have an airlock, but just loosely covered.