Question 1

Hi, I am a long time lover of Tooheys New and have just started my first attempt at Tooheys Draught home brew. My aim is to brew a close likeness to New but with an alcohol content of about 5% or so. Can you tell me how much sugar I need to add to the fermenter to achieve this?

 

The approximate alcohol content of a Tooheys Draught beer kit with 1kg of Dextrose or Cane Sugar, which both have a high rate of fermentability, is around 4.5%( 5% in bottled product as the bottle sugar adds approximately 0.5%). 

 

When choosing the quantity and type of sugar to use you need to understand the flavour characteristics they will give to a brew. Cane sugar whilst highly fermentable creates a thin beer with potential cidery tastes. 

 

Dextrose whilst still highly fermentable will give you slightly more body than Cane sugar but if you are looking for a beer with full mouth feel and rounded flavour then we would suggest trying a blended sugar such as Tooheys Liquid Brewing Sugar. 

 

These blends have been created to enhance the flavours of our beer kits, however these blended sugars contain Malt Extract and/or Maltodextrin which provide body and flavour to a brew but have a lower rate of fermentability and therefore result in a brew with lower alcohol content. By increasing the sugar or lowering the water level to make a higher alcohol brew you risk unbalancing the Malt Sweetness and Hop Bitterness blended in the beer kit, we would therefore recommend concentrating more on flavour than on alcohol when trying to re-create your own version of Tooheys New. 

 

For your reference below is the calculation to work out the approximate alcohol content of your brew.

 

Original Specific Gravity (SG) - Final SG = X x 0.13 = Y + 0.5 (bottle sugar) = Total Alcohol by Volume %

 

example: 1042 - 1006 = 36 x 0.13 = 4.68 + 0.5 = 5.18%