mbaker33

Recipes 

Hey Guys,

I made an Octoberfest last night and somehow managed to put an extra gallon of water into the pot and ended up with 6 gallons at the end instead of the normal 5.25 that I like to have. So the ABV is going to be a bit lower, is there any way to correct this after it is already in primary? My OG is 1.043 and I am using the European Ale Yeast.

Thanks,

Mark

JMSetzler

Recipes 

There is no way to correct it at this point. Should still be good beer though The color might be a little lighter than expected as well.

__________________
brewsandblues.org - Beer and Smokin' Blues

IXVolt

Recipes 

You could possibly freeze distillation/fracturing the beer and remove the formed ice. But you'd have to repitch the yeast as well.

I would just run with it the way it is. Who knows, it may turn out great.

cellardoor

Recipes 

You could possibly cook up a quick concentrated solution of like a lb or 2 of dme to increase the gravity to what you desire. It would probably change the taste a bit and bitterness. I don't think it would make the beer worse at this point.

__________________
Cellar Door Brewery

Primary: Smoked Porter
Secondary: Flanders Red 2010
Kegged: 10.10.10, Robust Porter, American IPA


"Without algae, there would be no life on earth, the seas would be sterile and the land would be uncolonized."
-Sir David Attenborough

danielinva

Recipes 

I was thinking the same thing, but if he's already at 6 gallons it would have to be seriously concentrated at a low volume to give him enough head space for his fermentation.

ArcaneXor

Recipes 

You could have just boiled longer to drive off more of the extra water. But that's obviously not a choice now.

You could:

1.) Brew another batch designed to compensate for the shortcomings of the first one and blend the two
2.) Add additional malt extract to the fermenter, as has been stated. If you don't have any fermenter space left, just pour some of the dilute beer out before adding the concentrated, additional wort.

__________________
The Fiesty(sic) Goat Brewery est. 2007 & Clusterfuggle Experimental Ales est. 2009
Planned: Fat Man Brown Porter (Pro-Am #2), WLP 351 Hefeweizen, WLP 860 Munich Helles
Primary: Centennial Falcon IPA (Pro-Am #1), sLambic I
Secondary: Flanders Red
Kegged:Himmel un Ääd Kölsch #8, Farmhouse Session Saison Pilot Batch, Chocolate Milk Stout, Pale Ale, Chili Smoked Porter, Berliner Weisse w/ Brett #3

david_42

Recipes 

Authentic Oktoberfests can run as low as 2% ABV, so I'd say leave it alone. You can always drink it in liter mugs, rather than pints.

__________________
Remember one unassailable statistic, as explained by the late, great George Carlin: "Just think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize half of them are even stupider!"

mbaker33

Recipes 

Thanks guys for all of the replies. I thought about putting some LME or DME in, but wasn't sure how it would work out. As it is, it sill likely be a 3.5% to 3.9% ABV, not horrible, but definitly not what I was hoping for.

In hind sight, I was trying to think of ways to prevent this from happening in the future and I thought about either A) marking the pot with gal/qt marks, or B) marking some sort of stick with the same, perhaps my spoon.

I wasn't sure about putting magic marker on something that will be in constant contact with the wert, any ideas?

shek

Recipes 

I actually check my kettle with a ruler, the kettle is 7.5G and every inch below the rim to the surface of the wort is about a half gallon...I'm thinking of putting notches on the side of my big stainless brew spoon every half inch so that I can also use it as a ruler.