Should I top off at 5 gal?

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barside laundry

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I made my first all grain batch on Tuesday and after a few mishaps in the brewery things went well. Because i was using my bottling bucket with a heating element in the bottom :) I ran low on sparge water. I also used 13 pounds of grain and about 5 ounces of hops:p . After the 90 minute boil my kettle had about 5 gallons of wort. After running about 3.5-4 gallons through my counter flow chiller it stopped draining:mad: . I looked in the kettle and saw about 1 gallon of total trub. Part of this is due to 5 ounces of hop PELLETS not in a bag (I don't know why i keep using pellets instead of whole) and other reason is because I did not recirculate the mash enough. After 3 quarts I thought is looked clear but I was wrong. After sparging a gallon into the kettle it got really clear. Now I know what 'clear' means. So should I top off to 5 gallons in the secondary or just let it go at a bit less than 4 gallons?
 
If you're less than or near your target OG, I'd leave it go. Only if I was a lot higher than my target OG would I add water.

Personally, I'd probably leave it alone regardless, but that's just me.:)
 
I would leave it alone. Adding a gallon of water will water down your beer and who wants that? (Besides BMC drinkers) Four gallons of good beer is better than five gallons of bad beer.
 
if you use hops you well get less wort because the hops soak up the wort, unless you squeeze the hops to get the last bit of wort out, I have a 15 gallon kettel so i get about 10-12 gallons of wort and I use pellets and I may loose about a quart maybe a little less. note I whirlpool my wort prior to cooling and that helps
 
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