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Most of those ridiculously high ABV beers have been ice-distilled (some multiple times). Supposedly it's technically illegal for homebrewers since it's distilling, but it's basically just cooling the beer to the point where some of the water freezes and removing the ice. You can get pretty decent ABVs (12%+) without resorting to that though. You'll need a ...

Making a (good) hard root beer sounds tricky. At least, the traditional method of brewing root beer doesn't seem like it would scale well to the weeks-of-fermentation beer brewing model. I imagine in the end, while you would have higher alcohol content, too much of the sugar will have been fermented, so you'd end up with a few gallons of not very sweet ...

I went through exactly this about 9 months ago. I couldn't find anything online about it, so I used a basic cider as the inspiration. Here are the exact notes I took while brewing it. Some sections were direct copies from the cider recipe, I added the rest. 1lb Munton’s Dry Malt 2Fl Oz Root Beer Concentrate ¾ cup priming sugar 5lbs granulated sugar ...

Your process sounds fine - it's the way you're using the hydrometer that's the problem. To estimate alcohol content, you need to take a reading at the start of fermentation. You cannot read the alcohol content from the hydrometer alcohol scale at the end of fermentation. The hydrometer cannot measure the alcohol content directly, but it can estimate how ...

Depending upon quantities, there are many benefits to adding zinc. For example, you'll get better lacing, as zinc helps precipitate proteins. Zinc additions can also increase fermentation rate, improve the extent of attenuation, improve yeast vigour and viability, and improve beer flavour through stimulating acetate ester production and ...

If you're looking for a quick, easy calculation, you can use: ABV = (OG - FG)/.75 (and then multiply by 100 to get a percentage) or ABV = (OG - FG)*131 However, it's not a linear relationship, so there's a fair bit of error in both of those estimations but they'll get you within a half a percentage point of the actual value. If you are concerned about ...

You can add more yeast anytime if you like, but 1.040 to 1.014 sounds like its done fermenting to me. The beer isn't going to get much more fermented than what it is now. The beer would have to be pretty hot for the yeast to get completely killed off. There should be plenty of yeast left to carbonate the beer. If you really feel that yeast is the reason ...

You'll have trouble with the sugars fermenting. One option, which may or may not work, is to make the 'beer' to your target alcohol percentage, then filter it really good to pull out as much yeast as possible, and then perhaps add a potasium metabisulfite tablet or two to retard any remaining yeast. You could then add your sugar sweeteners without them ...

Yes, you can pitch a low alcohol yeast and it will stop fermenting when it reaches it's alcohol tolerance, leaving your mead sweet due to the residual sugars. You do need to consider that the exact ABV at which the yeast stops working is variable and may not match exactly what is on the package. If necessary, you could add more sugar or honey after ...

Charlie Bamforth, in a recent episode of the beersmith podcast, mentioned that zinc was used in some UK Breweries to assist with head retention. He suggested that 2mg per litre would be about right (Its been a while since I listened so please check it out first, just in case you poision yourself!). If memory serves me, the discussion is towards the end of ...

Agreed with @brewchez. The SG of 1.014 tells you that a lot of fermenting has already happened (though it is odd that you saw no airlock activity; what about yeast foam on the surface or stuck to the sides of the fermenter just above the liquid level?). With an O.G. of 1.040 you'd usually expect a bit more attenuation, down to 1.010 or 1.012, unless you've ...

Short answer: Yes you can. You'll need to make a starter and get that yeast actively fermenting before you pour it into your main fermentor, though. That's now a fairly hostile environment, so adding them at the peak will help them deal with the low sugar & high alcohol environment that you'll be putting them in. I'd suggest a fairly neutral ...

I used Maple to plot the expression in your question as a two dimensional surface using the range of values you suggested. The plot looks rather flat in that region, so I chose the midpoint of your intervals (OG=1.065, FG=1.015) and computed the tangent plane to the surface at that point. (The tangent plane is the best linear approximation to the surface at ...

I spent some time this weekend dusting off my algebra. (Do not tell my high school algebra teacher that algebra was useful!) I tested this formula against the original for a range of typical brewing OG's (1.035 - 1.095) and FG's (1.002 - 1.028). I found that it didn't stray from the above calculation by more than 0.06% ABV. Considering the variables ...