Expert: Spencer W Thomas - 9/29/2009

Question
how r u mate, i was just wondering how much sugar to put in the wort to get midstrength [3.5] percent alcohol, from memory this is 500g, or half a kilo, 1 kilo is around 5%, iis this corect, thank you.

Answer
Basically, 1% sugar turns in to 1/2% alcohol.  Thus a 10% sugar solution (100g of sugar added to 900g of water) will produce approximately 5% alcohol if it is completely fermented out.

Thus, if you are making a 20L batch, you'd add, as you say, 1 kilo of sugar to get about 5% alcohol.  Of course, if all you are adding is sugar, your result won't be very tasty.