6.5% Beer?

[gumby0000]

Hey everyone,


Last night i got my hands on a couple of six packs of the new carlton cold ultra chill's (6.5% alc)

Just got me thinking... how can i get these levels of alc in my beer fro a kit? is it possible?? im only new to this and probably kidding myself but still be interested to know what the process would be...


Cheers

 

[tcraig20]

Hey everyone,


Last night i got my hands on a couple of six packs of the new carlton cold ultra chill's (6.5% alc)

Just got me thinking... how can i get these levels of alc in my beer fro a kit? is it possible?? im only new to this and probably kidding myself but still be interested to know what the process would be...


Cheers

You can get up to about 12% from most yeasts. Making alcohol is easy, making a balanced beer is a bit more challenging.

A tin of extract and 1.7kg dextrose should give you about 6.5% alcohol.

 

[gumby0000]

How dramatically would that change the taste of it? Has anyone tried it?

Whats the highest alc level you ever had?

 

[tcraig20]

How dramatically would that change the taste of it? Has anyone tried it?

Whats the highest alc level you ever had?

Im sure a lot of people have tried it. I think the highest alc. beer Ive made was about 5%, but I plan to make a barleywine later this year which should be somewhere over 10%.

My understanding is that higher alc. contents tends to produce beers with less body, especially if they are made on dextrose. Using malt and speciality grains will add body, but will require additional hops to balance the sweetness of the malt.

Im sure someone far more qualified than I will step in and give you a more detailed answer soon

 

[OzBeer_MD]

Hi GumbyBrew,

I only staarted brewing in September, One of the best beers I have made was a 'toucan' Coopers bavarian larger with 1kg of coopers BE1. 7.5% ABV, served it on tap at a party, 19L keg got emptied!

Seems like I fluked a great Bock. Basically more fermentables - more goodies for the yeast to turn into alcohol. But what the other guys are saying is true. I am trying to make an ale version at the moment and the hyrdo sample when I racked it the other day makes me think that it might turn out very bitter.

Where are you? Filling out your location details in your profile helps us, hey you might be next door!

MD

 

[0M39A]

As JamesCraig said, anyone can make a high alcohol brew, but balancing it properly with enough bitterness and hop flavour to match is the tricky part.

the most alcoholic beer ive made was an 8.5ish AIPA, and was plenty bitter enough to cope with the high alcohol and sweet malt flavours.

if all you want to do is dump a heap of fermentables into a mix with a can of *insert name here* pre hopped extract, go for it, but chances are its going to taste like crap.

if you want it to taste half decent, you'll have to do at least a small boil and add some bittering hops, and hopefully some flavour and aroma ones as well.

chances are though that if you like carlton cold ultra chill's you wont care at all and probably want your beer to have as little flavour, highest possible alcohol and drink it at -5C.

 

[brettprevans]

as said its easy to make high alc beer. the tricfk is making good tasting high alc beer. you need a balance of hop bitterness and malt to balance out the esters of high alc.

I have a 12% russian imperial stout. other than that, this is my next highest.

Brown Bavarian Mongrel Lager
coopers Bavarian Lager,
0.5kg DDME,
0.850kg DLME,
0.25kg Maltodex,
0.35kg Dex,
200g Choc Grain,
12g Craftbrewer Swiss yeast (s-189),
10g saaz @15min, 15g saaz @0
21L
6.1%
3 weeks at 10C, 1 or 2 weeks at cold as you can get it.

fantastic drop. Ive moved onto to pure extract but this is still a fav. If you wanted to increase the alc just up the malt or dex a little and increase the hops a little.

 

[RobboMC]

The easiest way to make strong beer is not to fill up the fermenter so much. If your kit & kilo of choice makes, say 4% alc in 23 litres, then it'll be 6% if you only fill up to 15 litres. This makes it hard to get cool enough of course, and so some ice is needed instead of water.

Or you can do what Doc D did and use 2 cans of kit, and about a kg of other fermentables. Since the kits are around 2.5%, this gets you about 5% from the kits, plus another 1.8% or so from whatever the fermentable is, ending around 6.8%. If you do this, use malt instead of dextrose, or it'll be pretty bitter.

Two kit cans and a can of liquid malt into 25 litres usually makes a bl**dy good beer, unless the kits are rubbish No-Name ones from the supermarket. I made a twocan IPA last year, 2 cans of IPA kit, 1.5 kg of liquid malt, just chucked it in, 7% alc.,
nice and hoppy and real easy.

Or an even better way is to steep a kg of grain, boil in some bittering, add that and make your kit stronger AND better.

 

[daanmuller]

almost finished fermenting a 9% honey wheat. started it 14.02.08 Og 1072

Bottling today or tomorrow.