Everyone always wants to know ways to kick the ABV in their beer and create something that will leave you stumbling or at least moving slow. There are several ways that you can do this, and we will review what they are. Most of them are common items that you can find around your house or in the grocery store.

There are a few things that we should point out before we get started.

We always recommend brewing our refills or recipes as is, especially if you are a new brewer! You want to make sure to follow the directions and get the processes down. If you don’t have the brewing process down, then when you start wanting to experiment you might overlook some steps or make a mistake or two and get a bad brew.

No one wants that.

It is also important to note that you should always chase flavor not ABV. Adding different adjuncts and fermentable’s will change the flavor of the beer you are brewing. So, if you decide to dump a bag of sugar into your beer, most likely it won’t turn out that well.

Okay, enough of all that lets dive into what you can use to increase the ABV in your beer.

The first one is obvious and tends to be what we recommend.

Malt Extract

Adding more malt extract either hopped, liquid or dry will increase the ABV of your beer and improve the flavor as well. This is the best option to add more ABV to your beer. We offer deluxe refills on the website which pairs a standard refill with two LME’s to help boost up the flavor and ABV.

We also offer LME, DME and HME’s as single items that you can buy to add to anything you are brewing or to create your own recipe.

The next few items that you can add are ones that can be found in your house. We would recommend adding 1 cup or 2 cups max of these to your beer. Depending on what you are using it will add about 1%-1.5% ABV per cup to the final ABV.

First, we will start will Sugar.

You can add table sugar, corn sugar, or brown sugar. You want to be careful with the amount of sugar you're adding as we mentioned earlier that can create some odd flavors.

When adding these you would add them to your 4 cups of water that you are bringing to a boil and mix it up until the sugar is dissolved.

Also, it is a good idea to pair the type of sugar you are using to the type of beer your brewing. Brown sugar would go great with a stout or an amber beer, where corn sugar would be good for a light ale or lager.

One thing to note about sugar you cannot use sugar substitutes, they will not ferment. So things like Stevia or Splenda won't work.

Okay now let’s get into syrups and other liquids.

You can add things like Honey, Maple Syrup, Agave Nectar, and Corn Syrup. Again, these will add about 1%-1.5% ABV per cup to your beer.

When adding these you would add them to your 4 cups of water that you are bringing to a boil and mix it up until the sugar is dissolved. Also, it is a good idea to pair the type of sugar you are using to the type of beer your brewing.

If you ever have any questions or are unsure what to add just shoot as email and we can get back to you and give you some advice on what we would recommend and what would go with what you're brewing.