Lowering ABV?

So I brewed a strong scotch ale this weekend and WAY overshot my efficiency somehow, and hit an OG of 1.102 on accident with a 10 gallon brew, and I only planned for about a 1.080 (this is even having an extra gallon left behind in my brew kettle)...so if I get the attenuation that I'm expecting out of my starter of yeast, I should end up with about a 10.5-11% beer. While this may be ok for some, it is way to high for what I wanted (only about 8-8.5%). and I am wondering how to effectively lower that back down. I'm fairly certain I can just add some water to it, however I am not sure when I should do this, would it be after primary fermentation, or right now while its fermenting.


here is the recipe I made up and used for this along with a couple pics of the brew day:

14# german pale 2 row (used golden promise)
8# Maris otter
2# crystal 75
1.5# Munich
1.5# Vienna
. 5# crystal 120
.25# heavy peat smoked malt
(26# total grain)

3.5oz ekg at 60min
.5oz ekg at 15min
2tsp irish moss at 15min

You can add water to thin it out at any time. It will also dilute hop character (which shouldn't be too much of an issue with a wee), and thin the body. Use boiled then cooled water to make sure there are not bugs in it to ruin the beer. OR cut it with a small beer.

Agreed to the above. Not a whole lot you can do other than dilute it with some SANITIZED water. You can do it right at bottling if you'd like. The only drawback would be if you didn't have enough keg/bottle space for the extra volume.

You can send some of that extra efficiency my way, by the way, if you'd like.

if your fermenters can hold extra volume just do a small 1-2-3 gal batch of low OG wort and top it off to reach desired ABV. go BIAB right in the kitchen. you can add more/less hops as desired. do it soon and probly makes no difference to yeast. actually, theyll probly be happier in a lower abv wort anyways.