Diluting wort during fermentation

I brewed up the bells two hearted ale clone beer yesterday. I came in a bit low on the total volume (about 4.75 gallons wort). I must have boiled off more than usual.

I was considering topping off the beer to supplement this and get it to a higher overall volume of beer. I have to split the final product in half as a gift to a friend.

Can I do this after the beer has already begun fermenting? It has really only gone strong in the last hour or two. The gravity was a bit higher than what it was calling for as well. 1.067 OG.

Bells Clone

Thoughts?

thanks in advance.

UPDATE:

When I racked this to secondary last week for dry hopping i verified I had undershot my overall quantity of beer pretty bad. I only had 4 gallons to the secondary. I added 1 gallon of vigoursly boiled water that was then taken to room temperature overnight.

Today I took a taste after 1 week of dry hopping. I don't know if I am paranoid or not but it sure seems like it has a watery taste. I am going to let this sit another week with the dry hops and then I will keg it. I hope that this didn't ruin the batch. In hind sight I should have just left it at 4 gallons and lived to brew another day.

you might be able to top off after fermentation is complete.

adding anything during fermentation might oxygenate your brew

If I had to top off at the end of fermentation I would do it when adding the priming sugar.

your 4 oz of sugar to maybe a qt of water but I would not go any more than that.

I hope this helps

-Jason

I will be kegging not bottling. I doubt that would affect it though right?

you will not be adding priming sugar,

but you will still need to boil and cool the water if you add any.

I think in your case I would live with the loss and brew again soon

you are spliting this up in to 2 kegs ?

I was planning on splitting this into 2 kegs. I'm not sure exactly what my friend has but I think it's a small keg that will fit like, 2.5 gallons of beer and has those hookups for the CO2 cartridges. I'm not exactly sure what she has, but that was my plan. Half for me, half for her. My biggest regret at this point was just saying hell with it and doing a 10 gallon batch. Oh well, I guess next time.

I do this all the time, on purpose. So do commercial brewers like Bud. Here's a link to a wiki article I wrote explaining this.

Excellent wiki.

Thank you WortMonger! I will try this out. Now deciding how much water to add....

Remember there are limits to this technique and it won't work well for just any beer. Your beer is at 1.067, and that is 7 points higher than recommended for this technique. It may cause a "watery" taste to the beer or some other defect. I would add water prior to fermentation in your case. You may try this post fermentation and let us know, just use pre-boiled sterile water.

WortMonger said:

Your beer is at 1.067, and that is 7 points higher than recommended for this technique.

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The wiki notes this is done up to 1.064. I think I'm pretty close to that.

Regardless I plan on doing this and I will post an update for any ill-effects.

Thanks for the quick replies. See you in 3 weeks!

Be sure to boil the water you add well to drive out all oxygen and try to rack it onto the beer as gently as possible.

I'm curious about your original question, though - I don't see a problem with adding water while the beer is still fermenting. We often talk about how yeast consume or bubble away all the oxygen in the wort during fermentation. So long as those yeast are active, won't they get rid of any oxygen you introduce through added water? And as people are saying, you could boil and cool some water, so the only extra oxygen introduced will be from the splashing during pouring.

Also, I know we don't like to rapidly and dramatically change our yeasts' environment, but adding a quart of water is hardly altering it, and with a slightly more diluted sugar concentration, the alcohol concentration will be lower, which is something else yeast appreciate.

Maybe I'm thinking about this the wrong way?

What about adding wort after the initial wort starts fermenting? Same pitfalls as adding water or much more problematic?

Less pitfalls as adding water, as you aren't shrinking your gravity or the body. The blending techinique only works with certain styles, and those are usually lighter in gravity. For other styles that aren't wanted as light, one should try adding spiese or gyle (unfermented wort). Here's a good thread about adding fermenting wort (krausening) to a finished beer.

Thanks. I undershot my OG so I panicked and added some additional wort to try to up the grav. Wasn't sure if I'd done something critically bad.

I'm kind of in a similar boat, but...
what if you racked boiled water into the secondary fermenter BEFORE transferring the beer to reduce splashing? I came out with about 4 gal for a 5.5 gal batch, and i'm worried about my fg being too high

jdopchibrew said:

I'm kind of in a similar boat, but...
what if you racked boiled water into the secondary fermenter BEFORE transferring the beer to reduce splashing? I came out with about 4 gal for a 5.5 gal batch, and i'm worried about my fg being too high

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What was your OG? Take your OG readings in the kettle, after cooling if you do full boils. That is the best time to adjust gravity because you still have all options available.

You are pretty safe doing the water addition method if you are extract brewing because the recipes numbers are designed around the specified ending volume and the extract used....you can't be off because your "conversion efficiency" is guaranteed by using extract.

helibrewer said:

What was your OG? Take your OG readings in the kettle, after cooling if you do full boils. That is the best time to adjust gravity because you still have all options available.

You are pretty safe doing the water addition method if you are extract brewing because the recipes numbers are designed around the specified ending volume and the extract used....you can't be off because your "conversion efficiency" is guaranteed by using extract.

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I was doing ag, I got a little fuzzy near the end and added the wort to my carboy without taking a gravity reading first I thought I had the correct amount of wort in the brewpot, but i ended up having about an inch and a half of hops in the bottom of my pot, leaving me with way less than i expected in the fermenter. I'm clearly still learning....

jdopchibrew said:

I was doing ag, I got a little fuzzy near the end and added the wort to my carboy without taking a gravity reading first I thought I had the correct amount of wort in the brewpot, but i ended up having about an inch and a half of hops in the bottom of my pot, leaving me with way less than i expected in the fermenter. I'm clearly still learning....

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Ah, got it. Most of my brewing uses 1.5-3 ounces of hops in the boil so I use pellets in a fine mesh bag. I have found that my hot break trub is very predictable. I'm not an IPA or IIPA guy having a kettle full of hops is not something I have had to deal with. You might consider making a hop spider, they work very well and can hold a lot od hops including whole cone.

helibrewer said:

Ah, got it. Most of my brewing uses 1.5-3 ounces of hops in the boil so I use pellets in a fine mesh bag. I have found that my hot break trub is very predictable. I'm not an IPA or IIPA guy having a kettle full of hops is not something I have had to deal with. You might consider making a hop spider, they work very well and can hold a lot od hops including whole cone.

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yeah... citra ipa with 5oz of pellets definitely sucks up a fair amount of wort. Would I be able to take a gravity reading before transferring and discern wether or not it's worth adding slightly more water?

my target og was .063 or so...

jdopchibrew said:

yeah... citra ipa with 5oz of pellets definitely sucks up a fair amount of wort. Would I be able to take a gravity reading before transferring and discern wether or not it's worth adding slightly more water?

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I don't think I would, I tend to take what I get once it goes into the fermentor. If you need to dry hop, just do it in the primary vessel. After pulling the hops, cold crash for a week to help compact the trub and regain some beer. If you can't cold crash you could fine with isinglass or gelatin to help clarify and compact the trub...bottle or keg 3 days after fining. Even with fining, colder is better.