rockout
Well-Known Member
I brewed my 4th batch the other day and took the advice of folks in this forum when I did a "vigorous boil" - put my stainless pot onto 2 burners on my stovetop and partially covered the wort during boiling so that the boil was really really rolling, unlike my previous 3. Problem was, a LOT of water boiled off, and we were left with about 4 gallons of wort to dump into the fermenter (starting gravity was 1.075), and my cousin (that's been learning this along with me) convinced me that we couldn't add water out of the tap after the boil because it's not sterile, or clean enough, or whatever. We used tap water for the wort in the first place and he thought that you have to boil it before you seal the whole mess off in the fermenter. Then I did a little reading right after and it seems to me we SHOULD have topped off to the 5 gallon point... am I right about this? That's question 1.
Question 2 is, now that I'm about to transfer into the secondary, is it okay to add water now? Should I boil water and add it? Should I boil water, cool it, THEN add it? Or should I just leave it alone and transfer just the 4 gallons?
For the record, we used the final kit that I still had lying around - an ESB from 7 Bridges whose recipe called for 5-5 1/4 gallons of water. Starting gravity should have been between 1.056-1.062 according to the recipe. I'm transferring to secondary today so any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks guys!
Question 2 is, now that I'm about to transfer into the secondary, is it okay to add water now? Should I boil water and add it? Should I boil water, cool it, THEN add it? Or should I just leave it alone and transfer just the 4 gallons?
For the record, we used the final kit that I still had lying around - an ESB from 7 Bridges whose recipe called for 5-5 1/4 gallons of water. Starting gravity should have been between 1.056-1.062 according to the recipe. I'm transferring to secondary today so any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks guys!