I recently made the sweet stout and would like to complicate it, raise the abv a bit too. If I added a pound or two DME to the next batch would I have to do anything else? I’m also curious about adding some coffee at the end of the boil. Ok last question, I have about four fingers of maple whiskey I’m dying to add to something…ordering another sweet stout and cream ale today along with dme
Adding dme will increase the gravity and will increase your Abv. But by adding more to it you will lose out on some of the other flavors that’s in a stout. You might want to add little more roasted grains to it also to keep it tasting like a stout. You could also just add sugar there are some brewers that do that to increase their Abv. Also search imperial stout and base your recipe on it
Awesome thanks I’ll look it up, I do like the stouts and porters best but felt I was missing that kick
There’s a lot of things you can do to change a beer, but adding too much of any one thing throws off the balance of flavors. When I’m building up a recipe, I start doing some searching to find other recipes along the lines of what I want to do. Working off of that, I decide what I want to put into mine and what proportions. Early on I just threw things at kits, and that doesn’t always work out. I was encouraged by the second brew kit I did where I added some extra ingredients including a pound of Kiln Coffee malt that I steeped with the steeping grains. It wasn’t bad right from the start and at 6 months it was kind of meh. I did a sweet stout right after that (added some things to a dry irish stout kit plus a pound of lactose). It wasn’t bad but nothing impressive. Then I started messing with the kits waayy too much and the results ranged from ok to I’m not really sure I want to drink two cases of this. Then I found that the coffee stout I did came into it’s own after the 1 year mark. Nothing else matured that well though. So you can modify a kit, but do some homework before you start throwing ingredients at it.
Thanks ford, I really appreciate your honesty. I ended up ordering the dry stout to compare with my sweet stout but I was thinking of adding to it so maybe I’ll wait. I tend to be inpatient, I know I should follow recipes first then modify a second batch.
I hear you on being impatient. My first beer that I brewed a little over two years ago was from a kit, and it was the only brew that I made from a kit and followed the instructions. I made three or four other kits right after that first one, but added things to every one of them. Then I started out making my own partial mash recipes. Some turned out pretty good, some not so much. Then my brewing tapered off for awhile because it was so time consuming. Now I’m set up for all grain with enough equipment to pull off any sort of double batch (10 gallon) that I want. And I’ve finally learned to take more time and care into what I’m preparing to make. I have BeerSmith on my computer and an app on my phone for brewing and spend time researching and working on my own recipes since that’s the direction I want to go. I’m really kind of excited to see where this year of brewing takes me since I’m no longer restricted by my equipment.
thinking about brewing a irish red ale next week the recipy only comes with lme not dme so thinking about adding a pound of dme i know it will increase the abv but what about the flav do i need to add extra hops
