Adjusting volume when bottling?

Hello all this is my first post,

I have been curious as to whether or not I should re-adjust the volume of my brew to 5 gallons to take into account for lost liquid when transferring to secondary/bottling bucket. Would this dilute the brew too much or merely bring it back to its intended volume?

I look forward to hearing from y'all!

Well when you are brewing with a kit you should brew with the amount of water it says, as that will give you the best results. If you have the recipe you can put it in some brewing software (or post it here and some people can help you) and you will be able to adjust the size of the batch, that way you can brew enough to get 5 gallons into bottles. You just need to scale all the ingredients equally, not just the water.

You can dilute the beer, but you will end up with thinner (lower gravity) beer. Also you need to be careful to pre-boil the water to push out the oxygen in it and also sterilize it.

Cheers,
Brad

Don't worry 'bout it. It's close enough. You will end up with a more full bodied beer and that's always better than a more watered down beer. I often end up with a bit less than 5 gals. Just bottle it. Enjoy.

Beerbeque

making beer always results in loss. when you graduate from kits and make your own recipes, you'll make them for 5.5 gallons, to account for the loss.

you can add water before fermentation starts, but don't do it after or it'll taste like watered down beer. if you do it beforehand, it 'mixes', and though it will thin the beer some, it doesn't quite have the same negative impact.