COOPERS ORIGINAL Lager
Dried Malt - Light 500g (1kg??)
Malto Dextrin 1kg
Will that combo work? And be a much stronger beer??
Or have i missed something? or misunderstood completly?
Thanks
1 kg of maltodextrin is a lot. I believe it is fermentable in the realm of around 30% (which means 70% is unfermentable).
Think about what each ingredient does. Yes you want a strong beer (that recipe will actually give you a weak one) but you want a good tasting strong beer yes?
When sugar ferments it produces alcohol and carbon dioxide among other things.
Some unfermentable products provide other beer essentials like body and flavour. To get high alcohol beer is absolutely possibly but it's a good idea to balance it all out so it isn't just horrendous tasting rocket fuel.
In a nutshell: Malt is partially fermentable. The unfermentable parts will add to body, mouthfeel, head retention and flavour. The fermentable parts will add to alcohol.
Sugar is totally fermentable (whether dextrose or sucrose/table sugar). This will add nothing to body, head retention or mouthfeel (in fact it may detract from it) but will add alcohol. The amount of malt by weight required to give the same abv as sugar is more (I think about 25% more but I'm not completely cewrtain).
Maltodextrin, as I said before is mainly unfermentable and will add to body, mouthfeel and head retention but little to alcohol or flavour.
To get higher alcohol can be as simple as just adding more sugar but that can also give you a dry, thin, watery tasting brew. Also if the alcohol production gets too high and the yeast health or cell count is no good, the yeast will simply stop functioning.
There are several ways to beef up a kit.
1. Use less water - instead of 23 litres, make 18.
2. Add extra malt and dextrose. Try and balance it up so you avoid a thick overly sweet brew (too much malt) or a thin dry watery brew (too much dextrose)
3. As suggested above - do a toucan which is two kit tins made up to 23 litres.
If you beef it up a fair bit you will need extra yeast and you should make sure it's fresh.
Best to get the balance and techniques right first before playing around too much I think but if you're first doesn't work out as you idealised, don't give up - give it another go and learn from mistakes.
By the way - those sediment reducers are a waste of time and a pain in the arse. There are some really good techniques you can utilise to reduce sediment but those little bits of plastic are not part of any of them.
