Pastry Stout ABVs

According to this NPR article you seem to be correct:

"Turns out that sugar slows down the absorption of alcohol from the stomach to the bloodstream."

This Men's Journal article provides some further details:

"The authors believe adding sugar to alcoholic beverages significantly slows the rate of gastric emptying—the process where nutrients from your stomach pass into your upper intestine, which is where alcohol gets absorbed. In turn, this expedites how quickly alcohol metabolizes in your body, so less alcohol enters your bloodstream, they explained in a press release. "

So essentially alcohol slows the absorption rate through the same process that occurs when drinking with a full stomach.

 

I was listening to a podcast and they tested the wort with a bunch of debris like hop particles, and trub. Each time it measured the same as the clean one. The amount of particles doesn’t have effect the gravity. Also, breweries aren’t using a hydrometer like a homebrewer. They use a much more precise method.

 

From what I understand, almost all craft beer ABVs are calculated by converting OG to potential alcohol minus residual sugar. As in, they calculate them theoretically, not analyze them directly. As such, their calculations can be quite a bit off, but since noone's taking random samples and paying labs to run the ABV, we don't really know.

As opposed to the wine industry, which virtually always labels based on lab analysis of finished wines.

 

As a home brewer, my bad ass burton ale at 10.5 abv has more alcohol burn on the mouth and throat than my20 abv stout liquor does. Mostly, in my opinion, the effect after 1 pint of either is pre determined and stouts have more dark grains and adjunct material that will block the taste of alcohol. Or, if u dare, have a sip of clear ,and I mean the real deal 90 % shine then a sip of commercial shine like the miss named apple pie that is sold at 80 proof around here and compare.

 

Or at least that’s what they want you to think. I’m 100% certain this depends on the brewery. I would totally believe that particulate matter in standard wort would not affect gravity measurements, but I can’t imagine the shit-tons of sugar and fruit purée in some of the styles sold today doesn’t affect the gravity measurements, no matter method.

I guess I’m wondering how much different adjuncts might affect measurement. Also wondering if the methods used are accepted in order to give brewers favorable ABV “results” despite the accuracy. For example, the base beer for a pastry sour/stout lineup is a certain abv and thus, every beer in the series has the same abv listed despite the total adjuncts added to the end product.

Of course, the only way to verify abv would be to lab test every batch but I can almost guarantee most fad brewers are not doing this, hence “ABVGate”.


Sidenote - the wine industry does not strictly label ABV based on lab results. In fact, it’s understood that certain wineries always label particular varieties as 15% despite knowing the true ABV may vary. This is done in order to meet regulatory/tax guidelines.

 

yes sugar does. Sugar drives the gravity up but it’s also fermentable. For your cereal analogy: the cereal itself does not impact the gravity but the sugar extracted from the cereal does. However, that sugar is fermentable which drives the alcohol up. But for pastry stouts they have a lot of unfermentable sugar which causes the sweetness. Add a bunch of fruit and say chocolate and maple post fermentation not all of the sugar will ferment out.

gravity is measuring the density of the wort. Sugar effects the density.

 

Thanks for sharing that. I had a feeling, as do so many others, that these label ABVs are inaccurate. The next question is, are their calculations bad and it's unintentional, or are they trying to game things?

 

I think it’s poor processes. But I only have 450 north to reference. They brew a 8% beer then dump a shit ton of fruit in it but never recalculate it after the fact. All that fruit dilutes the beer.

 

Large "craft brewers" don't have in-house labs? Sierra Nevada, Boston, Spoetzl, Yuengling, etc. None use an outside company like Alcoholic Beverage Testing or other labs?

So, the TTB is lying?
Alcohol Beverage Sampling Program (ABSP)

ABSP Results by Year 2008 - 2016
2016's ABSP Malt Beverage results:

Granted, with ~6,000 breweries in the US in 2016, testing 157 beers is laughable, even with about 1/3 of them having errors, and the TTB even admits "In most cases, we notify the industry member about the violation and work with them to bring the product into compliance."

The ABV of wine has a much broader legal tolerance but, yes, there is a tax violation possibility:

 

There are definitely some brewers that lie about stouts being "higher" abv than they are (specifically Aslin), but I don't think thats a wide spread issues. It's mostly that the residual sugar masks the "booziness", kind of like when you have a sweet mixed drink it tastes less boozy than one that isn't sweet.

Outside of the bigger breweries, most still are using hydrometers for ABV calculations (via OG and FG). Some use refractometers but the same concept still applies. Some send to labs for confirmatory testing though

Most of the time the adjuncts are added post fermentation so this isn't really an issue. Occasionally they throw stuff in the mash/boil but I doubt that would affect it much.