Extra High Gravity Beer

I thought I would try and push the alcohol limit in a couple of my last batches, but after tasting them, I realized I had something more comparable to malt liquor. I know it's beer and all that, but they are not such pleasant beers to drink at 12% and poorly balanced.

The question to you all:
Would it be so bad to add some water to batches (brewed the same way as mentioned above) currently fermenting to lower the gravity and maybe create a more drinkable beer?

I think that if you add water you will be diluting both the gravity (lowering it) and also the hop flavor. You will still ultimately have the same malt to hop ratio. It might be a lower abv% but it might not actually be any more balanced. Does that make sense?

I would let your beer finish fermenting/aging. Brew a second batch with the characteristics you want and blend the two. Maybe something light and very hoppy and blend it with your strong malty beer. You could play around with what ever flavors you want!

Hope it helps!

+1 on blending the batches of beer.

Brewing something like an Indian Pale Ale but with half (or less) the fermentables and all of the hops may result in very bitter and hoppy a 3%-3.5% beer that would cut the malt liquor taste of your first batch quite effectively.

If you made a full 5 gal batch of malt liquor you might have a hard time finding a food grade vessel large enough to blend the two in...

I have 15 gallon food grade barrels I bought from us plastics for about $30 shipped

They r0x

Maybe you could add water and dry hop at the same time to balance it out. OR you could boil some hops in a few cups of water to get the bitterness your looking for. It's a great chance to experiment.

I would definitely say DON'T DUMP THE BEER. Save a couple bottles (if you're a bottler) and forget about it for ~6 months. Every time I open an "old" beer, I'm impressed by how much it improves. Especially with a high gravity, low hops brew. You might end up with a pseudo-barleywine?

Stick the bottles in the cellar for at least 1 year. I have some that are three years old and fantastic!

Thanks for the suggestions....I like both ideas; 1) storing some bottles for a long time and 2) mixing a new brew in to the super malty brew. I have a couple batches of the stuff, so it's nice to have some ideas to play around with.

Good people here.