Adding more alcohol

buzz1979

I'm about to make a Newcastle brown ale kit and with an additional 1kg of sugar the final alcohol should be 4%. I'd like the final alcohol to be nearer 5%. Any ideas how much additional sugar I should add to get it close to this. I was thinking about 500g as a guess, but really don't know and don't want to end up making it overly strong. Any suggestions please?

HBO_Staff

When adding extra sugar to increase the alcohol strength it can be a bit of trial and error, but if you know the final gravity reading of the beer ingredient, often between 1.010 and 1.014, then you can use this calculator here on this link to find out what the original gravity reading needs to be:

http://www.brewersfriend.com/abv-calculator/

As a guide, if you are making 40 pints and the final gravity reading will be 1.014 (if you don't know what the final gravity reading will be then assume 1.014 and it wont be too far out) and then enter the original gravity reading to see what strength it will approximately produce, as a guide you need it to be around 1.050

The calculator will then show the estimated strength you will end up with. If you need the original gravity reading to be around 1.050 then add your malt extract and your Kg of sugar, mix with hot water and top up with cool water, then add more sugar, perhaps a couple of hundred grammes at a time and thoroughly mix up and dissolve then take a hydrometer reading, it must be well dissolved into the brew or the reading wont be accurate. Once you get it to the required reading you can then add the yeast and leave to ferment.

Alternatively some hydrometers such as the standard ones we stock have a table included, which shows how much sugar to add per litre to get the brew strength you need. Yeasts will only ferment to a certain strength but most yeast included with beers and wines will ferment higher than needed so you should be OK, if wanting to increase the alcohol strength by quite a bit then a new yeast with higher alcohol tolerance would be needed.

The other way is trial and error, add say an additional 500g of sugar, take a startign and final gravity reading and work out the strength, you then know for next time for a batch of the same size.