ABV

As long as the yeast can handle it, more fermentables (sugar) will lead to more alcohol. You can achieve this by using more malt, or you can use sugar in almost any other form: honey, brown sugar, rock candy, regular table sugar, etc. Depending on which you use you may get some flavor or texture contributions. Regular table sugar is 100% fermentable so it makes alcohol and leaves nothing else behind. But if its not balanced your beer might end up being too dry and/or thin.

 

100% correct. To clarify though as to not confuse the OP, almost all alcohol in beer is derived from sugar extracted from malted barely. Many beers use Wheat, Oats, and Rye but for sake of simplification let's just say it's mostly Barley.

Some beers do use simplified sugars such as table sugar, but it's usually a very small percentage of the alcohol contributed.

 

For the Pliny clone I'm brewing now, they have you dump a heckuva lot of corn sugar in there to bump up the alcohol. .75lbs if I remember right. I guess they do this to better balance the massive amount of hops?

 

I'd say they do that to get the desired ABV without making the beer cloying. i.e. think of simple sugars in a DIPA as replacing some base malt in order to thin the body (comparatively), rather than as adding to a base that was already set. But if you are asking if DIPAs have high ABV to balance against large hop bitterness/flavor/aroma, I suppose you could say that.

 

New word to me, and I get what you're saying. Instead of adding more malt and making the beer taste thick like a syrup, just add a simple sugar to bump up the ABV. I wonder how it would be though if I made this kit again without the extra sugar. Just less boozy I guess, which is fine with me.

 

The "boozy" descriptor may also be from a technical flaw (i.e. fermenting too warm) and not related to the simple sugar.

 

Yeah fermentation temp was probably above 75 degrees. Lower 60's equals clean, crisp beer

 

Double IPA