Getting extra ABV without extra sweetness

I'm also considering adding corn sugar to up the ABV on the batch I brewed about 48 hours ago. It's fermenting well so far but I'm a little worried that I underpitched. OG was 1.072 and I'm using WLP002 English Ale yeast and would love to hit around 8 or 9% on this IIPA. I'm pretty new to homebrewing so this is an extract batch.

My questions are:
1. Would adding corn sugar during fermentation help the yeast out, lowering my potential FG? Or hurt it in some way?
2. As I'm worried about having poor attenuation, will this maybe make it even sweeter?
3. Would it be more beneficial at this point to throw another vial of yeast in, along with corn sugar?

Thanks for any help!

 

1) no, it might dry the beer out a bit more. mght. shouldnt hurt the beer though.
2) if y didnt pitch enough yeast to begin with then i wouldnt add more fermentables now. especially easy fermentables like sugar.
3) how long has the beer been fermenting? if its already been going for a few days the. pitching more yeast now wont do a lot for you.
honestly, to give better feedback more info would be helpful. how long has it been fermenting, how much yeast was pitched, etc...
i wouldnt sweat it though, just let it ride if goure unsure about these things, yeast arerobust and it will likely turn out just fine.

 

Thanks for the reply! I brewed it about 48 hours ago and it had started fermenting sometime between when I brewed it and the next morning when I was able to check it again. The reason I don't think I pitched enough was because the starter I had made was only going for less than a day before I realized I had time to do the brew Saturday instead of Sunday. I'm not sure how much yeast there was in total but I think the vial was pretty fresh.

Your suggestion about not adding more fermentables makes sense, I just wasn't sure if it would put more strain on the yeast or if it would help it grow or become more healthy (if that's even still possible at this stage). I have a lot to learn yet about yeast behavior.

 

Just add some brett or lacto and it will be a 9% beer!! FG would drop to about 1.06 and have a nice funky sourness too.

Honestly though, the yeast died either because it was under pitched (not enough) go 2 packets or do a starter that has some time to get to a stronger colony.

 

I'm with you part of the way but still feel that unless it makes a significant improvement it's not a good idea.There are health and social aspects to raising alcohol levels which have to be borne in mind .If you are only going to drink a glass or two at a time this doesn't matter very much but that just isn't what beer is all about.My own opinion for what it's worth is that alcohol is an inevitable consequence of the process and the more fermentables you use (for the good reason of increasing taste) the more you will get.A downside is that you can't drink so much of it so the overall enjoyment isn't any more.Personally I find that beyond a certain strength the flavour gets in the way!But I've had beers of 5.5% ABV which have much more flavour than some of 8.5% so it isn't a linear relationship.I like beers to be accessible so I can have another or two, and at a strength where this doesn't make me fall over. The use of sugar used to be routine in UK brewing, in fact it was largely responsible for the characteristics of our beers.This wasn't table sugar though but brewers' sugar which is actually quite tasty.I once asked a brewer how he made such a tasty mild (at 3.4% it's amazing) and he replied that the use of #4 brewing sugar was part of it. This is a very dark sugar indeed. Acknowledgements to patto1ro; http://barclayperkins.blogspot.co.uk/2009/06/refined-sugar-vs-invert-sugar.html

 

I know this was mentioned above, it seems that the short primary needed to be longer. For a high og beer like that I would leave for at least two weeks in the primary.

Try not to blame the manufacture of the product unless you are certain your process is golden.

 

On the sugar, no flavor thing, what about Belgian Dubbels. Or a triple with turbinado sugar. Flavor indeed.