mtbaesl
Well-Known Member
So I brewed up a Guinness clone yesterday, everything went great. The only hiccup was that I came away with a freakishly high 92% efficiency, bumping my O.G. up from 1.046 (expected) to 1.057, which is really too high for style. I attribute this to a 90+ min sparge (fly sparge) vs my usual ~60 min. Instead of doing something intelligent, like adding water before the pitch, I just shrugged my shoulders and moved on. Now the beer is happily fermenting away, and I thought, I wonder if I could add water now to get the gravity closer to what I want? Every voice inside me seems to think this is a bad idea, but the question remains, can it be done? If it really is a bad idea, why? I know I'll have good beer as is, and it will just be a higher alcohol stout, so I'm not really worried, but I'm curious.