Alcohol by volume (ABV) depends on the style of homebrew and what your brewing preferences are. Whether you want strong hitting homebrew for special occasions or a light drink for after lunch, you’ll need to plan it ahead of your brewing day.
You can make homebrew stronger by adding more fermentable sugars to feed the yeast. Make sure the yeast has high ABV tolerance, has enough nutrients and its colonies are strong and healthy. However, increasing the ABV can cause other issues such as unbalanced flavors and a poorer body of the homebrew.
I’ve brewed stronger and weaker homebrews and in this article, I’ll share tips on how to increase the ABV in your homebrew and make it stronger along with other things that go along with it.
You see, the stronger your homebrew becomes, the more there is to do for complete homebrew, so it indeed is easier to brew low ABV homebrews than those stronger ones.
You need sugars to increase ABV
The only way to increase the ABV in your homebrew and make it stronger is by adding sugar and letting it ferment with help of yeast.
However, not any sugar will do, so it’s important that I explain a few important things you should know. In short, you have two options to make your homebrew stronger and they are the following.
Increasing ABV with Malt Extract
Malts are a great way to increase the ABV in a beer and they will allow you to simultaneously add flavor and aroma and increase the body of the beer by also causing a higher finishing gravity.
Depending on the malt extract you use, you can add more of that specific malt taste, so if you understand how malts go with one another, you can complement your existing beer with a malt that will make it taste and feel better while also increasing ABV.
Increasing ABV with simple sugars
On other hand, simple sugars such as corn sugar or honey will directly increase the ABV, but will also decrease the body of the beer and make it drier.
You have to be careful with this method because it can seriously impact the overall quality of the beer if you completely rely on it and increase the ABV from let’s say 5% to 10%.
It may make your beer too bitter and spicy, so ideal for any greater change in ABV I would include malt extract and perhaps only add simple sugars for up to 2% ABV difference at most.
Yet, do not hold me accountable because I don’t know what you are brewing and how exactly may it impact your beer.
On another hand, if you are making mead or ciders, simple sugars are the only way to go and if you experience off-flavors due to a strong alcoholic presence you can adjust them during secondary fermentation by adding spices and fruits to mask it.
You’ll need strong yeast to work with sugars
Not every yeast will work well with high ABV homebrews, so make sure your yeast has high alcohol tolerance.
Moreover, make sure that your yeast can reproduce within an overly sweet environment.
To fix this, you can use a yeast starter or re-hydrate your dry yeast to maximize the odds of it penetrating through sugar cells when pitching it in a primary fermenter.
If you use malts to increase the ABV you will not need extra yeast nutrients because malts are full of them, however, if you use simple sugars, it is recommended to use yeast nutrients, so the yeast can stay strong and healthy.
Consequences of making homebrew stronger
Now, be prepared for the following if you decide to make your homebrew stronger.
1. Unbalanced homebrew
Every recipe is made to create a balanced brew in which the alcohol, malts, hops, and other ingredients work together to form a good brew that will result in joyful flavors, aromas, texture, and strength.
If you tweak one thing, you’ll affect the entire brew. So, for instance, when brewing a beer, you should be careful when increasing the ABV, because although the beer may end up stronger up to your taste, you may not enjoy the annoyingly obvious alcoholic taste and lack of the hoppy aroma.
You see, hoppy IPAs are brewed with higher ABV to match the extra addition of hops because otherwise, the bitterness of hops could overwhelm your palate.
This applies to literally everything in your homebrew, so it’s important to either stick to the recipe that’s been proven, to know what you are doing, or to experiment and hope for the best.
If you find your homebrew unbalanced, you can fix it whether it will be dry hopping, adding more water to impact the gravity, or adding herbs to adjust the taste. However, it will significantly add up to the brewing time because for most of the changes you’ll need to give it extra time.
2. Longer and harder primary fermentation
When you add more sugar to the homebrew, the yeast needs time to break the sugars and produce alcohol. This doesn’t happen overnight, so you’ll need to be prepared to wait for extra time if you don’t want the sugar to stay in the brew and make your brew extraordinary sweet instead of making it stronger.
A lower 5% ABV beer may be finished fermenting in a week, but the 10% ABV beer may take 3 weeks.
Moreover, it also depends on what sugar you use to increase the ABV because not all sugars ferment the same in contact with yeast.
For instance, honey will take longer than other sugars due to its complexity for yeast to break through, so if you are using honey it may take up to 8 weeks for above 10% ABV from scratch. You’ll also need to ensure that the yeast has enough nutrients to work with and is properly oxygenated at beginning of fermentation.
If you use malts as a sugar source for your yeast, it will have nutrients because malts naturally contain nutrients, but adding other simple sugars including honey will create a tough environment for your yeast to grow due to the lack of nutrients found in them.
In such a case, you’ll need to add extra nutrients when starting a fermentation, so the yeast has support.
In either case, it’s recommended to take a starting gravity and a final gravity to see whether your homebrew is done fermenting.
3. Longer conditioning
Once the primary fermentation is done, you’ll need to account for the conditioning time and high ABV brews demand longer conditioning to mature. How long will this be is hard to say without having specific information about the recipe, but it will probably take a few additional weeks.
The taste is the best telling of progress, so crack a bottle after you think it’s done and see how much longer it needs to mature.
Does adding more yeast increase alcohol content?
Adding more yeast doesn’t increase the alcohol content if there was enough yeast to produce the available sugar in the first place.
Yeast colonies depend on numbers because the more yeast cells, the stronger the colonies will form and work together. Thus, it’s recommended to pitch extra yeast to ensure the colonies are strong.
Moreover, yeast doesn’t produce alcohol without sugar, so only more sugar with enough yeast to absorb it will increase the alcohol content.
Does priming sugar add alcohol?
Priming sugar won’t add noticeable levels of alcohol to your homebrew, but will technically increase the ABV and make it stronger because whenever new sugar is introduced to the yeast, it will break it into alcohol and Co2.
We are talking here about a 0.2% ABV change and in most cases, it will be less than that because when you add 5 grams of sugar per bottle or so, you can’t expect anything noticable.
Priming sugar is there only for the purposes of trapping the Co2 within the bottle, not to make the homebrew stronger nor to make it taste different.
Do hops increase alcohol content?
Hops do not increase alcohol content in a brew, but they are used to balance the flavors and especially the perceived bitterness.
Alcohol alone can be extremely noticeable and adding hops can counter it and create a more balanced taste recognized in beers.
On other hand, extracting too many hops with low ABV beers will result in extremely bitter beer, so it’s always about finding the right balance.
What yeast makes the highest alcohol content?
If you are brewing beer you’ll need to look for any yeast that fits the style of beer you are brewing with high alcohol tolerance.
Any yeast can produce high ABV if it’s tolerant and if you support it with enough yeast nutrients and sugars it can feed on.
Also, champaign and wine yeasts will make the strongest alcohol content in a brew, but you may use them for mead, champaigns, or wine, but not for beer.