Pumpkin ale/ water

Under normal circumstances I would never add water to a fermented beer to bring it to five gallons, but is a pumpkin ale different? The recipe I am using is from a very professional source, but it does call for me to add some water if needed after fermenting? I know there is A lot of pumpkin displacing the water but what's everyone's thoughts? My current plan is to be around 4 to 4.5 gallons I'm thinking if I'm in the three gallon range I will add a bit if I'm only of a gallon ill leave it as is.. I also don't want the beer to turn out to concentrated if it is missing water.

Where are you adding the pumpkin? Mash? Boil?

I'd account for your normal water losses (boil off, trub loss, chiller loss, etc.) but boost the trub loss if you'll have pumpkin in the actual boil. With some planning you won't have to add water after the fermentation. Measure your preboil gravity and adjust then as needed.

I didn't plan well so I topped my boil off to five gallons now that everything's settling I'm sure I have lost around a half gallon just from the pumpkin still more trub to drop just trying to plan on what to do after primary, leave as is or add water

GRAVITY GRAVITY GRAVITY.

All that matters is GRAVITY. Hit your target OG, no matter how much volume that is. That's the only way the recipe is going to turn out correct.

Gravity should be far more important than quantity. I'd rather have 4 gallons of the beer I intended than 5 gallons of diluted beer.

Was the OG what you wanted? That's all you need to tell you if you should top it off. If you're at your desired gravity you add more water you'll dilute it, I'd just leave it and take the volume loss, next time you can plan a bigger volume at the same OG if you need to end up with 5 gallons. Just scale up the recipe a bit.

edit: topher beat me to it!

Alright so if gravity is to low do I add water?

Jhoussock said:

Alright so if gravity is to low do I add water?

Click to expand...

No. Adding water would lower your gravity further.

Yup....you only want to add water if your OG is TOO HIGH.

If your OG is too low, you either need to boil longer to evaporate water out of the wort, leaving a more sugar-dense wort, or add additional fermentables to the wort, typically a little bit more DME.

Right now I'm at 1.014 I need to be at 1.010 I'm only at ten days but if I do end up at this number is that enough to add water?

That is final gravity (FG). Did you measure your original gravity (OG) before fermentation started?