Adding water?

Hi all,

I am wondering if it is really the best idea to add water up to the 5 gallon mark on the fermenter after finishing the boil. I understand you would want to add water to make up for the water lost while boiling, but you also lose a lot of beer when you remove the hops, grains, etc. So if you have exactly enough ingredients to make 5 gal, and you lose some of these ingredients, then your final volume should be a bit less than 5, right?

I'm just wondering because our OG measurement was at 1.050 instead of the expected 1.060 for this recipe. We did use extra sugar, extra hops, and extra yeast though, so I don't know if that can affect OG or not...

add the water. and next time take a SG reading before you add the yeast.

dawei21 said:

I understand you would want to add water to make up for the water lost while boiling, but you also lose a lot of beer when you remove the hops, grains, etc. So if you have exactly enough ingredients to make 5 gal, and you lose some of these ingredients, then your final volume should be a bit less than 5, right?

Click to expand...

That's why a lot of people make 5.25 or 5.5 gallon batches - the idea is that by bottling or kegging time you'll have 5 gallons left.