Increasing Alcohol %

[mickey P]

Nearly have my IPA recipe set but in the brew recipe calc I can't get the alcohol level over 4.5%. I was hoping for 6.5%. How can I increase the AC level without effecting colour and taste. will adding coopers brew enchancer help?

recipe is

1.5 L morgans pale extrc
1.5 L morgans amber extrc
400g klages 2 row (toasted)
200g Crystal malt (40L)

500g dextrose

50g Target Pellets (60min)
20g Willamette (15min)
20g Goldings (1min)

Yeast 1028 London Ale


20 liter final volume

[Oliver]

Hi Mickey,

Adding more glucose/dextrose will do the trick. It's mostly fermentable, and doesn't affect the color of your brew. The only difference in taste should be the fact that there's more alcohol.

According to one of my brewing books, 1kg of glucose will add about 2.5% alcohol.

Cooper's brew enhancer contains other things that will likely give it more body and make it a bit sweeter.

Cheers,

Oliver

[mickey P]

Thanks oliver,

hopefully that will do the trick!

[Miniac]

Thanks oliver,

hopefully that will do the trick!

With a KIT brew, is there anyway that you can add both a brew enhancer and Dextrose together to up the alcohol? I find the Brew enhancers make the AC level to low, still a nice drop with good head and body (am i talking about beer ) but more a mid strength. Or can i still use the brew enhancer but only make up 20 ltr?

Cheers,

Cam

[mentalmayham]

If your worried about flavour, head retanion, and so on added by commerical brew enhancers. Make your own enhancers.
Buy all your ingredents seperate and mix them to your own taste.

[Oliver]

You can add anything you want to a kit.

If you've brewed a beer with the kit and 1kg brew enhancer and it's tasty but you want some more alcohol, adding 1kg of glucose/dextrose should do the trick.

There is a limit to how much sugar you can add, as the yeast will eventually give up the ghost in the alcohol it produces. But the kit +2kg should be fine.

Cheers,

Oliver

[thehipone]

The london ale yeast can handle quite a bit of alcohol. I've made "double" IPAs that are around the 8% mark no problem. and I'm pretty sure that with good aeration you can get near 10%.

I'd add more malt rather than too much more sugar. Sugar doesnt have any yeast nutrients and that can sometimes lead to slow/stuck fermentations that don't reach the target terminal gravity. In the 6.5% realm its not too much of an issue, but if you decide to go much higher it can be.

Just curious, what recipe calculator were you using?

[mikey P]

Thanks oliva,

was thinking of uping the malts after tasting the JS IPA i was surprised by how much body it has dogger recommended 500g cyrstal

will prob match it with 500g klegs don't want to add more extract mainly because of the cost. would rather drop water volume.

Any good suggestions for a dry hop a bit nevrous about it because of the possiblilty of infection mabe a tea bag type one.

used the calc on the beertools.com site didn't have any dextrose which i now find weird as it seems to be a very popular ingredient.


Thanks

Michael

[Dogger Dan]

I am curently having a love affair with Centennial which is best described as a super charged Cascade. Very Citrusy

Dogger

[thehipone]

Dont be nervous about dry hopping, hop oils are naturally anti-bacterial. When you are adding them to the secondary the beer is fairly high in alcohol and low pH anyways, conditions that make it tough for things other than beer yeast to live. I've never heard of anyone getting an infection from dry hopping, unless you blow your nose on the hops before you put them in maybe.

The dextrose is probably listed as corn sugar.

[Mike P]

added the corn sugar to the beertools calc and it came out spot on thanks for the heads up