Rookie Move

I made my first ever extract home brew yesterday and as I proudly watched my airlock bubble this morning I found my first (of what I'm sure will be followed my many others) bonehead mistake.

My primary only contains liquid up to the 4.5 gallon mark. My water source was one 5 gallon jug and I obviously I did not account for evaporation/loss during the boiling stage or, in my excitement, didn't bother to check my mark last night.

So, 24 hours in, do I leave everything as is? Will the end result be more concentrated or will I just end up with a little less beer to bottle? Or can I sanitize more water at this point and add it to the 5 gallon mark in my primary?

this should have been apparent to you when you took your gravity reading and it was off... what, you didn't take a gravity reading? well then there is the problem...

RDWHAHB

leave it be. it will be fine. if anything you just gave you abv a little boost. nothing wrong with that in my book!

Unfortunately, nothing is apparant to me at this stage in the game...

I actually did take a gravity reading and noticed it was off. OG was 1054, the range was supposed to be between 1040 - 1050. However, without knowing any better, I assumed it might be a temperature variance and spent twenty minutes trying to "make" the gravity reading look correct (i.e. convince myself it was user error).

First lesson learned, thank you!

Yeah, it's no problem. I'll leave a little out on purpose every once in a while. It'll turn out fine.