How can you raise the alcohol content to get a little more bang for the buck?
Depends what you’re trying to accomplish. Adding any fermentables will increase the alcohol; this can be in the form of fruit, grain, extract, sugar, etc. But know that there are consequences to just adding stuff for the sake of upping the ABV. Adding straight sugar will dry the beer out, adding grain changes bitterness unless you balance with more hops, etc.
Again, depends what you’re trying to accomplish. Great beer is all about balance and optimizing the flavor of the ingredients, not necessarily the alcohol content, but if you really do just want more of a buzz, then adding sugar or DME would be the easiest IMO.
:cheers:
Someone had mentioned adding brown sugar to a nut brown to boost the octane a bit. I thought it sounded good or maybe some maple sugar.
I don’t want to ruin my beer for a buzz but they sounded good…
[quote=“capndavey”]Someone had mentioned adding brown sugar to a nut brown to boost the octane a bit. I thought it sounded good or maybe some maple sugar.
I don’t want to ruin my beer for a buzz but they sounded good…[/quote]
Neither of those sugars will leave any flavor behind. Might as well use table sugar.
Keep the simple sugar in the one lb range for five gallons and you’ll add 1% ABV without a really noticeable effect to the beer’s character.
[quote=“capndavey”]Someone had mentioned adding brown sugar to a nut brown to boost the octane a bit. I thought it sounded good or maybe some maple sugar.
I don’t want to ruin my beer for a buzz but they sounded good…[/quote]
Upon suggestion from a friend who “brewed for 10 + years”, I tried 1lb of brown sugar in a few batches. I found that I could “almost” taste it for the first week or so of drinking it out of the keg. Others couldn’t taste it, but referencing to a previous batch of the same recipe, I was convinced it was there. Not worth the trouble or worry for an extra 3/4 of a point.
Why not just add more base malt or DME? Why add sugar?
Adding simple sugars like cane, beet, or corn sugar or brown sugar will boost the alcohol without hurting the final gravity. If you add more malt or more malt extract, then 25 to 30% of the malt sugars are unfermentable, so it will raise the final gravity of the beer and basically sweeten and thicken the beer. This is mostly just applicable to extract brewers. All-grain or partial mash brewers can use more malt and not have it affect the gravity as much because we can adjust by lowering the mash temperature to 148 F and lengthen the mash time to 90 minutes or more to get more of the malt sugars to break down to more fermentable ones.
