bkbrown5881

Recipes 

I got a little confused with the recipe I chose on my first brew, (Magic Hat #9 clone), and added all the water during the boil. Is my beer OK or is it toilet water??
Its in the primary and bubbling quite well.

Any opinions would be greatly appreciated.

Hernando

Recipes 

If you didn't account for your boil-off and/or didn't top off, your beer maybe stronger than planned and your yield will be lower but sounds like you made beer to me.

__________________
"If you looked at the yeast under a microscope, you'd see lots of leather skirts, whips, & chains". ~Sam Calagione
Mountain Boxers Brewing

Skyforger

Recipes 

I'm not sure what this means. Were you planning on a partial boil followed by topping off the batch to full volume afterwards? And then you added the water during boil instead of after? Because if so this is no problem at all. It might even be more safe against infection (not that it's much of a risk either way....). If you added the extra water near the beginning of the boil, it might be a bit more bitter, but not a lot.

H-ost

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Are you saying that the instructions told you to boil 2-3 gallons and then top off after the boil but you went ahead and did a full boil with all 5 gallons? If so you have nothing to worry about. The directions only tell you to boil some of the total volume because they are assuming you do not have the equipment to boil all of it. If your pot/heat source has the capacity to boil the total volume then that just makes your life a little simpler by taking out a "top off" step.

drhookmec

Recipes 

Your beer should be fine.
Just chalk this one up as a OOPS lesson learned.

Your next one will allways be better then the first.

tim

bkbrown5881

Recipes 

Yeah the recipe called for 3 gallon boil, and the top off to 5 in the primary. I had a 5 gallon boil and tpped off a little bit in the primary to bring it up to 5.

Sounds like this will be ok. Thanks for the help. This forum is awesome.

arkowa

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Yeah, you will be fine. If anything, the beer will be better. better hop utilization and as mentioned before, slightly less chance of infection. Not that you are gonna get an infection from topping off water, but, paranoia reigns supreme. oh course you still topped off a little bit, so, oh well. Still better hop utilization. I know the recipe may say one thing, but if you have the ability to do full our near full boils, might as well.

plumbob

Recipes 

You'll probably get more hops into the brew this way.

Honestly, you paid good money for em, why not squeeze everything you can out of em!

Many better brewers than I would say a full boil (what you did) is superior to a partial boil (what the recipe called for). Both methods make beer.

bkbrown5881

Recipes 

Awesome, sounds like it gonna be just fine. Thanks again everybody for your help.