Sacrifice efficiency for quality

I am thinking of using 12 lb of pale malt instead of 8 and only using early higher OG runnings for a test brew. I want to end up with a 3.8% bitter so I shall dilute with treated water in the fermenter. The rest of the runnings I shall make a control batch of beer ( or call it a weaker easy drinker for summer if you will).

Has anybody thought about this or even done it?

Diluting with water in a light beer is a bad idea, IMO. In a more robust beer, it's not noticeable. I recently brewed an ordinary bitter, and my OG was a bit high so I topped up in the fermentor, with maybe 4L in a 20L batch. It definitely tastes "watery."

I think you'd be better off adjusting gravity with water pre-boil.

Budweiser dilutes too......

I often put ice cubes in my glass of homebrew - no detrimental effect it does not even de-gas it...

BOBTHEukBREWER said:

I often put ice cubes in my glass of homebrew - no detrimental effect it does not even de-gas it...

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This, Bob, is a travesty.

BOBTHEukBREWER said:

I often put ice cubes in my glass of homebrew - no detrimental effect it does not even de-gas it...

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The homebrew police will be their within the hour to confiscate every last bit of your homebrewing equipment. Don't even try to buy more, your internet lines are all tapped and youre being tailed. Never homebrew again. And it's too late to say you're kidding

Nateo said:

Diluting with water in a light beer is a bad idea, IMO. In a more robust beer, it's not noticeable. I recently brewed an ordinary bitter, and my OG was a bit high so I topped up in the fermentor, with maybe 4L in a 20L batch. It definitely tastes "watery."

I think you'd be better off adjusting gravity with water pre-boil.

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Maybe I'm missing something, but he's increasing his grain bill in addition to the adding of water. Are you claiming that the proteins tend to stay in the grain much more than the sugars, thus resulting in a watery beer?

In the UK Fullers only brew one beer - their strong flagship beer. There other beers are watered down versions of that - LITERALLY !

And about the ice cubes - don't knock it till you have tried it. I find condition and head are relatively unaffected. Did I tell you about my hop ice cubes - they are unbelievably good, drop one in to increase flavour and aroma - I have cubes made with 3 different hops now, so if I want EKG and cascade I drop one of each in - best if you smash them into little pieces first...

BOBTHEukBREWER said:

In the UK Fullers only brew one beer - their strong flagship beer. There other beers are watered down versions of that - LITERALLY !

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Do they actually water down the wort? Or is it more likely that theirs is a partigyle system where they use first runnings for the flagship, then second runnings to make other beers? I know a lot of older breweries do this, but I was unaware that any actually watered down the wort.

They have two runnings, then make four beers by blending, iirc. Byo did a writeup on them not long ago.

i don't understand why everyone is bashing BOB for his ice cubes? everyone knows cold mugs/beer are key in head retention...check out this video!



i kid, i kid.

Nateo said:

Diluting with water in a light beer is a bad idea, IMO. In a more robust beer, it's not noticeable. I recently brewed an ordinary bitter, and my OG was a bit high so I topped up in the fermentor, with maybe 4L in a 20L batch. It definitely tastes "watery."

I think you'd be better off adjusting gravity with water pre-boil.

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I don't see how adding water pre-ferment would cause a problem unless you were driving the gravity extremely low. The only flavor changes that come to mind are hop utilization and melanoidens, neither of which should lead to a watery flavor. What's being described is just a concentrated boil, which is what tons of extract brewers do. Without a more thorough explanation I'm saying that this is an inappropriately drawn correlation.

I think the OP's idea is just fine, use the better runnings for the beer and adjust gravity as needed. Not sure why you'd increase the grain and then cut with water instead of just leaving the grain alone and taking the first runnings but I'll assume every system is different and this is what would work.

How do fullers make the London porter then? Surely that's not from the main brew.

Parti-Pride To brew some of its leading brands, including ESB, London Pride, Golden Pride and Chiswick Bitter, Keeling harks back to tradition with his new stainless tools and uses the parti-gyle technique combined with blending to make up to four different beers from a single batch.

Heres a link to the full article:

http://***********/component/resource/article/Indices/16-Breweries/2398-fuller-s-the-pride-of-london

pohldogg said:

I don't see how adding water pre-ferment would cause a problem unless you were driving the gravity extremely low. The only flavor changes that come to mind are hop utilization and melanoidens, neither of which should lead to a watery flavor. What's being described is just a concentrated boil, which is what tons of extract brewers do. Without a more thorough explanation I'm saying that this is an inappropriately drawn correlation.

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Have you tried diluting with water post-boil in a light beer? I don't have all the answers, I'm just providing my empirical experience.

Thanks everybody. I was thinking that as the runnings get lower and lower SG maybe tannins or other flavours kick in, so was thinking of only using runnings from say 9% abv potential to 4% abv potential and diluting to give me a 3.8% final ABV beer.