Hello all. Im new here so sorry if this is in the area. But i hope you blokes can help me

Me and a friend recently bought a beer brewing kit and it is currently fermenting, this is our first batch of beer(its larger by the way) so we want to keep it to a simple 4.5%. but im wondering, how can we make it 4.5% how do i know when the beer is at the ABV?

How do i know what percent it is? i know it has something to with the hydrometer but im very foggy on how to use it.

Lets say when we check the beer whle its fermenting and its 9% how do we bring it down?

And if we check and its only 2% how do we bring it up?

Please reply as this is quite important to us and thanks very much for any help

Cheers

-Niall

you determin the abv subtracting the final gravity reading from the origional gravity reading. so after you boil, cool, and pitch your yeast you check your gravity and say hypothetically its 1.054(7%) and you check your gravity just befor bottling and its 1.010 (1%) you have an abv of 6%. to predetermin your abv when formulating a recipe you need to know your mash efficiency so that you can estimate your OG. you can then estimate your FG by assuming the FG will be 1/4-1/5 of the OG. there are programs available that do all the math for you and all you have to do is enter the quantity of your ingrediants... one of which is available on this website Homebrew Alchemist, I use this because even though its fairly basic its a lot easier than doing the math myself and its every easy to use
hope this helps

Thanks mate, that has cleared up a bit but, im very new to brewing so i dont really understand alot of the terms you are using.

Lets say i put the hydrometer in just after i have put all the ingrediants and dissolved them in the water and all tat, then i get a reading of 8% i can assume that i will get a reading of 1% when bottleing, so that gives me 7% beer.

But what if i wanted 9% beer? how could i make it stronger?

well you can't really always assume that you're going to get the hydrometer down to 1% a good general guess/estimation is 1/4-1/5 of the origional gravity (OG) the OG is the starting point, the point right befor you put yeast into the wort final gravity (FG) is the point at which fermentation is completed usually within a week maybe a little more or less depending on yeast activity. the FG can vary greatly depending on the type of malts you use because not all malts have fermentable sugars they're added for color and flavor. to make you're beer stronger you just add more malt to the mash or I assume you're doing extract brewing so you would use more malt extract, or you can add all kinds of sugars (honey, corn sugar, dextros,...etc) during the boil to give the yeast more sugar to convert to alcohol. the yeast are eating the sugars that are in the wort and those yeast produce alcohol as a byproduct so the more sugars they have to eat the more alcohol they'll create. now befor you go crazy dumping a bunch of sugar into your wort you may consider increasing the amount of hops to increase the bitter to help ballance the sweetness that will be created. hope this helps, you also may want to get a hold of a copy of john palmers book "how to brew" here's a link to the versian of the book thats available online: http://www.howtobrew.com/

Cheers matey.

But the thing is i think ive been a bit of a twat, we bought a kit and it came with all the ingrediants pre-made and weighed in a can that we just heated and dumped in the tub. it says that it will 4.5 % so i think thats as strong as i can get it

My local homebrewer supplies guy said that you can add a pound of honey to the boil, it will increase the alcohol content 1% without affecting the taste. I tried it on my latest batch, but I haven't made that recipe before so I don't have a reference point to compare what it would have tasted like if I didn't add the honey. This batch tastes fine, not overly sweat.