Alcohol Content

[melinda]

G'day men,
If I have an all grain recipe that is 5%, how can I turn it into a 4.5% brew? Do I just adjust the malt amounts till it hits 4.5%? (on beersmith)
Cadbury

 

[benno1973]

beersmith has gravity recalculator. From memory, within the recipe there's a gravity button at the top where you can enter the new OG and beersmith will recalc weights for you...

 

[jonocarroll]

IIRC there's some buttons near the top of beersmith to scale a recipe by alcohol%, FG, colour, bitterness, volume, etc...

 

[Fourstar]

Adjust only the base malt, leave the specialties where they are for such a small change.

The flavour change will be marginal and will avoid you having to add some stupid figure like 372g of crystal malt over 400g

 

[melinda]

Adjust only the base malt, leave the specialties where they are for such a small change.

The flavour change will be marginal and will avoid you having to add some stupid figure like 372g of crystal malt over 400g

Thanks men, I'll get started.

 

[manticle]

You could also keep the same grain bill but up the water amounts slightly (ie hit target gravity and volume then add a couple of litres more boiled, cooled water).

 

[Bribie G]

Erm why would you want to follow the likes of Tooheys and Carlton and water your brew down?

However if you don't mind spending a dollar or two you can easily adjust using 1.25 L bottles of ALDI sparkling mineral water which is sterile and deoxygenated. I've used it to adjust mild ales for competitions.

 

[manticle]

Not that I've done it but I'm fairly certain that adding an extra 2L of water either to a sparge or to a boiled wort is not out of place or uncommon.

Not sure how it relates to tooheys and not sure how different it is from adding your fancy pants water in its place, mr hefepoodle.

By the way - s04 made me a lovely English Brown with the most complicated grain bill I've yet devised.