Brewing Impactful High-Gravity Beers with River North

River North founder Matt Hess—with an assist from head brewer Matt Malloy—shares their methods and the thinking behind them, including:

• the overarching philosophy behind the flavor intensity
• imperializing styles that still maintain their identity
• designing recipes for ultra-high-gravity beers
• carefully selecting specialty grains
• scaling up existing recipes for maximum impact
• starting at 30–34°P (1.129–1.149), then feeding the fermentation to go higher
• mindful selection of sugars for flavor and fermentability
• balancing sweetness and ethanol warmth in huge beers
• selecting and blending dried yeast strains to get sufficient attenuation
• using your mash tun’s max capacity as the starting point
• embracing inefficiency and wort loss
• using long boils and sugars to hit target gravity
• high oxygenation and pitch rates to aid fermentation
• adding both dextrose and yeast to boost gravity and keep the fermentation going
• dealing with stuck fermentations and other pitfalls
• planning for barrel-aging, from excess beer to the angel’s share
• flavoring with coffee beans and cacao nibs
• packaging and carbonating thick high-gravity beers
• using the distillation method to test for ABV

And more.