Increase gravity after 3 days fermenting?

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cbird01

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I am brewing a Samuel Smiths Winter Welcome clone. I hadn't done a batch in 9 months and was a bit rusty (also only my 3rd all grain) My target OG was 1.073 and I hit 1.060.

This was due to the fact that I accidentally added too much water to the second sparge. I decided to just see how much boiled off and ended up with 6 gallons in the fermentor and a low gravity.

EDIT: I am using WLP002 English Ale

I really would like to up the gravity, since this is a keg I will be serving at my wedding and it is for my to be bride who LOVES Winter Welcome. Want to be nearest style as possible (and get my guests real drunk)

Sooooooo, I have read I could boil up some DME and add to fermentor after cooling back down. I have space in the fermentor. Fermentation is still kicking with 1 inch head and bubbling away. It didn't start pushing bubbles until tuesday afternoon.

Want to up the gravity vs. don't want to screw anything up.....comments please?
 
Sure, you can add DME to bump up the gravity. Personally, I'd wait until fermentation starts to slow down.
To get to 1.073 overall, you'd need to add about 3.5 pounds of DME to a total volume of 1 gallon to raise the total volume to 7 gallons at 1.073. That may be alot for the volume, but I think it should dissolve ok.
Good luck :mug:
 
If you really have your heart set on the higher gravity, yes you can add more DME as you described Assuming your yeast pitch was sufficient for the original anticipated gravity it shouldn't cause any problems. GXM's addition sounds about right. The question becomes do you have enough room in the fermentor. With a gravity that high the fermentation usually gets pretty aggressive and the Krausen will eat up a whole lot of headroom.
 
I have a 6.5 gal carboy with 5 inches to the neck. How about if I used LME instead - would that utilize less water? Could I just boil it....cool it down and add?
 
Keep in mind that you will have to adjust IBUs as well.

Also, I know what's done is done but for future reference the problem is not that you had too much sparge volume but that you didn't boil it long enough to bring back down to proper volume. This is an important distinction because it means that you can adjust during the boil to make sure that the final result is okay.

What I do is start the 60 minute boil clock when my volume hits 6.9 gallons regardless of how much volume I started with. I've started with as high as 9.5 gallon and had to boil for an hour before I started the boil clock.
 
Thanks for the tip dontman. I was thinking about this on brew day and couldn't get past the fact that doing that would alter my hop schedule....but just thinking differently and boiling of before hop addition solves that.

Another adjustment I have found I need to make is that water evaporates faster at altitude of 7000 ft.
 
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