Water Level in Wort

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Joined
Apr 14, 2011
Messages
24
Reaction score
0
Location
Rancho Palos Verdes
The way I was taught to brew with extract was to use half the total volume and top it off with bottled water. This saves boiling time and cools the wort pretty quickly too, but it seems to me you could use even less water and just top off with more water. It seems to me that you could use 2 gallons of water instead of 2.5 gallons. You'd just have more concentrated wort until you topped off your fermenter. Is that right or is there a critical mass of water you want to work with in your wort?
 
There is something about the kits are created to work with the level of sugar in the wort during the boil. If you use less water, you beer could be more bitter from the hops being utilized more.
That's what I've heard. ( I think )
 
bruin_ale said:
you're opening a can of worms here.. read this:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/hop-utilization-178668/

Looks like you could boil as much or as little as you want. The lower limit is probably how much water do you feel safe using before you're scorching the extract.

Oh forgot about that. :)

Actually I didn't notice much difference when I boiled 6.5 gallon for my amber extract kit.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top