Should I add some water to my fermentor?

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Frozgaar

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Ok, so I searched for an answer to my question and I'm kind of getting mixed answers in various posts so I'm going to explain my specific case.

I brewed a Hefeweisen on wednesday and fermentation is currently going strong.

My OG was 1.060, but my recipe says it should have been 1.052. When I took the reading I couldn't remember what the OG should have been so I figured it wasn't a big deal and I finished up and put it away.

Later I noticed my wort wasn't all the way to the 5 gallon mark on the bucket. By the look of it, I'm at about 4.6 gallons.

So what should I do? Leave it as is, or should I boil up and cool off enough to fill it up to the 5 gallon mark?

If I do, should I do it ASAP or could I wait until I rack it into secondary?
 
To be more explicit: you're probably not going to be able to taste a 0.008 difference in OG anyway, so what's the point? An extra 4 bottles of beer? Unnecessary to me, but you could certainly add boiled/chilled water at any time during (or after) fermentation. Also, skip the secondary fermentor -- it's completely unnecessary on 99% of beers anyway, and a hef has no business going into a secondary. Why not add it on bottling day? Cheers.
 
Doesn't really matter. If you want to add the water I'd probably do it when you rack (just because it may be easier) but if it were me I would just leave it alone and go with the 4.6 gallons you have.
 
To be more explicit: you're probably not going to be able to taste a 0.008 difference in OG anyway, so what's the point? An extra 4 bottles of beer? Unnecessary to me, but you could certainly add boiled/chilled water at any time during (or after) fermentation. Also, skip the secondary fermentor -- it's completely unnecessary on 99% of beers anyway, and a hef has no business going into a secondary. Why not add it on bottling day? Cheers.

The only reason I was wanting to do a secondary is because I might want to add some other flavors. What flavor that could be I haven't decided yet.
 
I'm a beginner too, but my first thought was to leave it. Seems like the more experienced seem to say that too. It will probably just turn out to be a little stronger. Give it plenty of time to ferment. Who knows, you may have even improved on it. I'm sure you won't mind the little bit of extra alcohol either.
 
Yeah, I'm going to leave it. 3-5 bottles isn't worth the effort or risk of screwing it up.

The recipe says it should turn out to be about 5.2 ABV. How much higher will it be with an OG of 1.060 rather than 1.052?
 
That depends on the level of attenuation that you get and the grain bill but assuming 75% attenuation 8 points should get you 0.5-0.7 percentage points further.
 
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