Missed Target Volume

For a 1.041 / 5.5gal recipe I hit 1.061 / 3.5 gal so I topped off until gravity read the target gravity. Is this an OK practice? Any effect on the final product?

You should be fine. What did you end up at gravity/volume that is, just curious but it doesn't matter.

If your gravity is 1.06 at 3.5 gallons then you just have 3.5 gallons of higher ABV content beer. Closer to 5.5% then down by 4.0% where you thought you would be. This can affect the taste slightly buy not buy much.

Oh and this is very common practice for extract brewing. Brew 2.5 gallons of wort and top off to 5 gallons to reach desired volume and gravity.

How did you get down to 3.5 gallons on a 5.5 gallon batch? What was your pre-boil water volume? It shouldn't be a problem to dilute it....

First all-grain and I noobed it. Mashed with 5.75g thinking I'd only lose .25g over a 90 min mash and 90 minute boil -- I'll be measuring evaporation rate tomorrow :-/

I don't have accurate markings on my carboy but I ended up with a little over 4 gallons. I assume the reason I didn't make it to 5.5 gal dilution is my efficiency?

rhamilton said:

First all-grain and I noobed it. Mashed with 5.75g thinking I'd only lose .25g over a 90 min mash and 90 minute boil -- I'll be measuring evaporation rate tomorrow :-/

I don't have accurate markings on my carboy but I ended up with a little over 4 gallons. I assume the reason I didn't make it to 5.5 gal dilution is my efficiency?

Click to expand...

You're going to lose a lot more water than that to grain absorbtion and boil off. I lose about 1.75 - 2 gallons of water in 12lbs of grain (and my equipment) and another 1.25 gallons per hour to the boil. So I usually need to start with at least around 9 gallons (give or take) for a lot of my batches.... If you started with only 5.75 gallons for mash and boil you under-estimated quite a bit. You should be using 1.25 to 1.5 quarts of water per pound of grain in the mash and about 1/2 gallon per pound of grain during your sparge. Then as you collect sparge you can stop when you hit your pre-boil amount. Try boiling 5 gallons of water for an hour and measure how much boils off so you will know what your actual boil off rate is...