Alcohol Boost
Thanks Norcal that was some good stuff. :-)
Wow, thanks for the information norcal! That really spelled it out!
I have used rice in a ginger brew that I make - basically just rice, ginger and sugar. It is fantastic, very sweet, like mead, and high alcohol. It is also light and fizzy, very much like a ginger soda. I have started to experiment with adding rice to other recipes now.
Learning how to use yeast at different stages is next on my list.
That sounds pretty cool Car Boy, you should post the recipe.
A common way to boost alcohol is to add corn sugar during the boil. Corn sugar adds less of an off flavor than table sugar, but still can't be used in extreme amounts. You could easily use corn sugar to boost your OG 5-10 points.
How to brew a really BIG beer:
1.060, 1.070, 1.080, you have to be kidding; I mean a really big beer. This starts at 1.100 and goes UP from there. I can buy a lot of beers, but very few of them are truly big. Life begins at 100, 1.100 that is. Let’s hear it for “century” beers.
I brew mostly all grain beer, and about 1 out of 3 has an OG of over 1.100, so this is aimed toward All-Grain brewing, but all things (except for the mash schedule) that we need to consider are important for both all grain and extract brewing.
The Numbers:
What happens when you brew an all grain BIG beer? Obviously the yeast ferments a portion of the sugars available giving you beer. Life is simple and beautiful, but the yeasts have a tough time.
The first step is to decide what we would like our OG to be, no magic here, formulate your grain bill in your normal manner`, We will discuss modifications, and the reason for them later.
Next, choose a target FG. Yes I said Final Gravity. Part of the art of brewing a truly big beer is to hit your FG. Let’s talk about that now. The achieved FG departs a lot of character to your beer, mostly in mouth feel and residual sweetness. How dry, or sweet do you want your beer? The residual sweetness left behind determines a lot of this character in the beer. The FG is very difficult to predict, none of the brewing software packages truly predict FG (they assume an average attenuation for the yeast used), and none of the current literature addresses this. So we each have to deal with this based on our experience and the principles of what we can do to impact FG.
For a style I’m going to choose one of my favorites, an English Barleywine. The style guidelines (BJCP Style guideline at BJCP.org) say. . .
OG
FG
IBUs
SRM
ABV
1.080 - 1.120+
1.018 - 1.030+
35 - 70
8 - 22
8 - 12+%
Let’s look at a 1.080 Barleywine that finishes at 1.020. This is an attenuation of 75%, easily attainable with most grain bills and most yeast. Let’s look at the upper end of the spectrum, a 1.120 Barleywine that finishes at 1.030. This again is an attenuation of 75%, though a harder to achieve 75%. Though, by the numbers, these two Barleywines are similar, they will have very different characters because of the FG. Let’s look at one more, a true monster, a 1.150 Barleywine with that same 75%, now very difficult, attenuation, a FG of 1.038. By the numbers it seems reasonable, but brewed using the same techniques I would expect the FG to be a bit higher, say 1.045-1.050, IMHO a bit too high and into the cloyingly sweet category. The 1.120 Barleywine I would expect to finish with a FG of 1.035-1.040. In other words I expect the Big Barleywine to drop approx 5% attenuation because of the difficulty the yeast will have in a high alcohol environment. The bottom line, when brewing BIG beers we need to get our attenuation up to achieve a FG lower than we would normally achieve.
These attenuation issues can be addressed with several variables including, rousing the yeast, the yeast selection, the grain bill, and the mash schedule.
Starter:
A pitchable tube or an Activator Pack is NOT enough yeast, a starter is definitely needed.
A starter, a large starter, a cup of (thick) slurry or yeast sediment, or pitching on top of a yeast cake is needed for BIG beers. With BIG beers you really can’t have too much yeast.
Wort Aeration:
Your wort needs to be well oxygenated or aerated to provide a good environment for your growing yeast. Vigorous agitation, which is what I do, is sufficient though direct oxygenation with an O2 gas injection would be better. Once the wort is safely cooled below 85F I rapidly move my immersion wort chiller up and down through the wort effectively completing the chilling of my wort and aerating it at the same time.
Rousing:
As the yeast is completing its task it is flocculating or falling out of solution. It does not matter is the yeast flocculates at a high or a low rate, with a big beer it will flocculate out before fermentation is finished. To compensate we must rouse the yeast at frequent intervals to keep the yeast in suspension and able to ferment the remaining fermentable sugars. The minimum would be to rouse the yeast 2-3 times per day (before you go to work, when you get home, and just before you go to bed.) Ideally rouse the yeast on a continuous basis. This does not need to start until fermentation is slowing down.
Yeast Selection:
Since we are dealing with attenuation the obvious answer is to select, if possible, a more attenuative yeast. In some styles all you are looking for is a neutral yeast, in others you need the character of the yeast to come through. For those you may consider a yeast blend, a neutral high attenuative yeast and your character yeast. My last Barleywine used a 1007 German Ale yeast cake and a 1318 London Ale starter for a bit of English Character.
Grain Bill:
The problem we are fighting here is a high FG, we want to squeak as much attenuation as we can out of our brew. First let’s limit our use of malts which yield higher FG’s, the crystals and carapils type malts. Additionally we can add some sugar, up to 10%, (Remember this is not some BMC light beer we are trying to brew), there is more than enough malt backbone here to carry the sugar. Almost any kind of sugar will do, but I like to add a “character” sugar, Think maple sugar/syrup, Molasses, brown (light or dark) sugar, honey, Candi sugar, as well as plain old ordinary white cane sugar. All of these sugars are more fermentable than wort and will effectively lower your FG given the same OG because they are all nearly completely fermentable.
If you are using extracts, do not use the lower fermentable extracts (such as Laaglanders, which is great in a Scottish 80/-). You will have plenty of non-fermentables from the size of your grain bill.
Mash Schedule:
Some general information on Mash temps. Attenuation is influenced by mash temps, and for different mash temps you can expect a different range. This chart is an interpretation of attenuations in an infusion mash in Noonan’s book. With a single infusion mash at 149F Noonan says an attenuation of 75-80% usually results. This highlights the fact that to maximize attenuation we want to mash at the low end of this curve. 
For a Big Belgian, which by style has a dry finish, you will also need to mash for high fermentability. The BJCP style guide for 18E, Belgian Dark Strong Ale says:
OG
FG
IBUs
SRM
ABV
1.075 - 1.110+
1.010 - 1.024
15 - 25+
15 - 20
8 - 12+%
This indicates an 80-87% attenuation of the wort. For Belgian Golden Strong Ale, BJCP style 18D, the target attenuation is 83-86%. If you are brewing a big thick beer such as a Thomas Hardy clone or a Wee Heavy, you want a higher than normal FG. For a normal strength beer, up to about 1.080, you would perform a single step infusion mash of around 155/158F to achieve this. If you were to attempt this with a 1.120+ beer you could probably sell the result as molasses, just kidding a little bit. What is needed is a counter-intuitive highly fermentable mash schedule. I would suggest a 146/149F - 154/156F step mash with about 40-45 minutes at the initial step and an hour at the higher step. Do not be afraid to extend your mash times. While conversion occurs quickly (10-15 minutes) Noonan says in New Brewing Lager Beer, ”A 120-minute mash is going to eke out every bit of diastatic power that the malt has to offer.” Also we want to go with a thin mash, greater than or equal to 2 qts/lb of malt, to promote greater fermentability. We want to give lots of time to breakdown the complex sugars (not the starches) into simple, more fermentable sugars. Many of us use coolers for a mash tun, and especially with a big beer there is not enough room for an infusion big enough to effect the temperature change, use a decoction. A decoction is a time proven method of stepping mash temps. While today’s malt doesn’t require a decoction for conversion, it is very effective at achieving step mashes. Brewing is an art, we may choose to use or not use any or all of these tools, but these are what we have to manage the mash.
Other than FG what other problems can we run into in a BIG brew. Additional obvious ones are high fruitiness and ester production and high fusel alcohol production. These are best managed by yeast selection, and fermentation temperature control. Because of the large amount of fermentables you are using in a big beer, it stands to reason that all the yeasts byproducts are concentrated in your beer more so than with a standard strength beer. Fermenting cooler than normal, as with any ale, will trend towards lager characteristics which include reduced ester and fusel production. Again, the volume of the grain bill with the higher level of fermentables will tend to keep these key ale characteristics near normal ale levels.
Yeast Selection (again):
To reduce the esters retained in your beer you may want to choose a different yeast, choose a yeast that is more restrained in ester production than you would have otherwise chosen, more important, IMHO, is temperature.
Fermentation Temperature:
Fermentation temperature I believe is the largest single success factor in brewing a BIG beer. High ester and fusel alcohol production is a function of the yeasts working at higher temps. Ideal fermentation would be at 55F (yes this is an ale) with WYEAST 1007 German Ale or 1728 Scottish Ale. I would also consider 2112 California Lager. For those in the ice belt, your basement during December/January should be fine.
http://beerdujour.com/Howtobrewabigbeer.htm
Fred
Wow, BonJour thanks for the novel. Is that really related to boosting the alcohol content?
IMHO, yes. But it does depend on how high you want to boost it. Some heretalked about 14-16%. When you want to brew a big beer/ boost alcohol, you want to consider all these factors.
Fred
I posted about the beer that was 14 - 16%. This particular batch calls for using extract and uses belgian yeast at primary, a distillers yeast at secondary, and a champagne yeast at the bottling. During all the fermentation, you also add cane sugar and demerara sugar on alternating days. The cane sugar provides futher fuel for the yeast, and demarara sugar provides some sweetness to the finished product. The finished product does not have a specific target gravity, as there are about 10 - 15 sugar additions during fermentation. The distiller's yeast is obviously very tolerant of alcohol and has a high attenuation (as does the Belgian yeast when compared to a lot of standard beer yeasts).
Holy cow, is that even above the barleywine range?
How long is the fermentation?