Hello. Having been a lover of beer for many years and having just finished my first brew(turned out great )

However the beer was only 4.5 % and i like my beer a small bit stronger, around 5.5%, ive tried to find lager beer kits for 5.5% beer on home-brew websites but it is really infuriating because it very rarely says what percent it is.

The only 5.5% beer i have found is ale and i dont like ale so how could i go about making 40 pints o fine lager lager?



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Usually the kits say how much extract they contain. Just run this number through a brew calculator like the one guitarlord has on here to find the OG or potential alcohol content. Another option is investing in a hydrometer (they're cheap) and watering down the wort with boiled water until you hit your target gravity before pitching. The downside of this method is that you will have less beer if you add less water, but it will up the ABV. The third option is add more malt extract, or sugar to the wort at the boil and use said hydrometer to hit your target gravity.

Jared
www.theweeklybrew.com

Next time you buy a kit, buy a bit of light Dry Malt Extract with it, and the hydrometer that penguin mentioned. Follow the kit instructions exactly, but when the boil is finished, add some extra DME to get your gravity up where you need it. When the wort cools, use your hydrometer to check your gravity. Then, ferment as you normally would.
Alternately, if you want to add alcohol with no extra body, you can add plain ole table sugar or honey at the end of the boil.
Using an extract calculator like Beersmith or the Homebrew Alchemist can help you do this a bit more accurately.

Cheers,
Dave

I would generally recommend against using table sugar. If you are going to simply add sugar use corn sugar or as Dave suggests honey. However, generally speaking, sugar should not comprise more than about 10% of your total fermentables.

Adding some light dry malt extract (DME) to boost the original gravity is the best way to go.

The recipe calculator in BeerTools (http://www.beertools.com) gives a predicted alcohol content. So one could simply input the information regarding your beer kit and play around with how much additional DME one needs to add to obtain the alcohol content you are shooting for.

If BeerTools does not have your specific brand of extract simply using the generic light or amber liquid extract etc. should be fine.

Of course, Dave's calculator may do the same thing. I've never gotten it to work on my Apple so I'm just going with what I am most familiar with.

I hope this helps.

- Scott

Why are so many brewers anti table sugar? I personaly have used it and haven't had a problem, even when my only fermentables were tomatoes and sugar ( my first experimental brew, it actually worked). I know it's generalty not to good on the yeast, but other then that what's the issue with it?

Jared

Personally, I like using table sugar. I've used it for as much as 30% of the fermentables in one of my belgian style beers, which came out awesome! There does seem to be a bit of bias against sugar in the homebrewing world, but after reading "Brew Like A Monk", I figured that if it's been used in beer for hundreds of years, there probably isn't much to worry about. Those monks know a lot about brewing beer! I have heard tales of sugar giving beer cidery flavors, but I haven't experienced that myself. The only cidery or wine-like off flavors I've ever had were due to high fermentation temps, not sugar content.
Of course, to each his own and all that.

Cheers,
Dave

Okay I admittedly I've never used table sugar in my beers...nor will I.

Table sugar (i.e. pure sucrose) is generally not used in most beers other than Belgian styles.

The common belief is that table sugar can produce cidery off-flavors.

I have no first hand experience in that regard but I see no reason push it.

Oh well...to each his own.

- Scott

There was a time when certain people said beer could only be made with barley too

im a wee bit tipsy on my home-brew at the moment but could i just add a few extra spoons of sugar to the brew once its finished the week of mixing but before it does the 2 weeks of fermenting and that would up the ABV?

That should do it!

Stihler wrote:Table sugar (i.e. pure sucrose) is generally not used in most beers other than Belgian styles.

I'm pretty sure it features in many Australian Draught beers. Because we have lots of sugar cane. However many of them are quite apalling beers. There is one beer, Melbourne Bitter, which is rumoured to be brewed with a lager yeast at 86 Fahrenheit so the fermentation is completed within as quick as three days, this sounds like a ridiculous unbelievable lie. That is untill you have tasted its badness.

However I would recommend adding about 1.1 pounds of table sugar to a 5.5gal brew of pale ale (I also recommend Australian high alpha acid hops). Or dark brown sugar for a dark english style ale. Yeasts LOVE dark brown sugar. I've added about a pound of dark brown sugar to a 3.5gal brew of a belgian style tripel, and this was a beer there was no arguing with.

Okay, i have now finished just bottles my second batch of home brew, this time i added two tablespoons of sugar to a bottle instead of the average, one. Im now pondering how much longer should i leave it brew because of the extra sugar? the beer kit recommended 2 weeks for the one table spoon of sugar.

Also i filled a two litre bottle with the last 2 litres from the 5 gallon brewing jug(the really really cloudy yeasty bit) and decided to experiment by adding 4 table spoons of sugar? will i eventually have really strong beer or just god awful beer?