Can i correct too much H2O in batch???

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mhot55

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HAd a Murphy's Law day brewing a Bells 2 Hearted CLone yesterday- glass thermom broke in boiling wort (just little bit of glass and that red stiff that weights down the bottom of a floating therm). Also, and more importantly, the hose clamp gave on my chiller pumping atleast 1/4 gallon of H2O into my wort......sure as hell helped cool it down quick. Now, aside from possible infections, which i hope i can avoid because the therm was boiling and my drinking H2O is decent in NYC (wishful thinking??), my batch volume is obviously affected as is my OG, and bitterness.
My OG was only about 1.046-048 and i was shooting for a .063. I took the reading before transferring to primary and after cooling to 76*. i understand the added 1/4 gallon pumped in the wort stirred up all the sediment and was obviously not mixed great and this could have an effect on the reading. I also took another reading after siphoning away the break/ sediment and giving it a bit of stirring and still got a .048.
Now, after writing a short story to bore everyone, any advice, that is aside from praying there is no infection? SHould i leave it and just assume the beer will be weaker in alcohol, should i boil a little 2 pint batch with DME to try and reclaim some flavor and body? any other ideas?
 
An extra quart of water would only move your OG by 3 points or so in a 5 gallon batch, so you must have had some efficiency issues as well.

I'd just leave it. The beer will be a little weaker, and may take longer for the hops to mellow (you got higher utilization due to the lower gravity boil, and you have less malt to balance the hops) but it will probably still be fine.

If you did want to try to "fix" it -- assuming you have 5.25 gal of 1.048 OG beer, you'd need to add about 2 lbs of DME in 3 quarts of water to get you 6 gallons at 1.063.
 
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