Adding water to secondary?

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LeftyMcGee

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Well I searched the forum and could not find an answer. I did a pumpkin ale and I am going to lose a lot of volume when I transfer to the secondary tonight. I was thinking of boiling some water and adding it to the secondary so that I get 5 gallons. Is this a bad idea?

Thanks! :mug:
 
Well I searched the forum and could not find an answer. I did a pumpkin ale and I am going to lose a lot of volume when I transfer to the secondary tonight. I was thinking of boiling some water and adding it to the secondary so that I get 5 gallons. Is this a bad idea?

Thanks! :mug:

Well, it depends on whether or not you'd rather have 5 gallons of watered down beer, or 4.25 gallons of the beer you made. I'm not trying to be smart- I'm just saying that you're talking about adding water. That will definitely "thin" the beer and water it down. That's fine, if that's what you want to do to have a full 5 gallons. If it were me, I'd just accept the losses and have the beer as is.
 
What is your method of transfer? You shouldn't lose much if you rack it right.

How much water are you talking about losing anyway ?
 
Yeah, it's a bad idea...unless you like watery pumpkin ale!

A lot of us scale our recipes up to 5.25 or 5.5 gallons, to allow for trub loss. That way we still get 5 full gallons in our kegs or bottles.

EDIT: Geez Yoop, you're too fast for me. My whole life, I've fallen victim to fast women...
 
This is perfectly fine, just realize the final product will be watered down in all aspects. You can do this on purpose as well to achieve a higher yield out of the same equipment. This process is called high gravity brewing.
 
Adding water should be fine, as long as you boil and then cool it first. But this will obviously dilute your beer. The question is: do you want a larger amount of weaker beer, or a smaller amount of stronger beer?
 
If you want a full 5 gallons you should really plan on around 5.5-6 gallons post boil but you would have to up the extract and grains on most kits. If 5 gallons goes in the the primary your looking at 4.5 or so gallons by the end or less with fruit or dry hopping. Personally id take the half gallon loss rather than dilute my beer. however how much of an effect it will have depends a lot on style and og/fg.
 
I got a lot of flak on this from the other board... but... I do this and it works for me... top off your fermenter with some fresh wort that is the same starting gravity as the gravity of your original wort.

Just wait another week for the 2ndish ferment to finish, check the hydrometer, and add your finings.

Or- just make do with what you have.
 
Guess I'll just make do with what I have. I made the usual 5.5 gal. I just didn't account for the amount of trub I would have because of the pumpkin. No biggie.
 
Guys I am a total newb and actually only had 6 bottles of Pumpkin Ale. Here is the background to the story. So I saw Blue Moon on tap in NYC around 2 years ago, I tried it with orange and loved it. During the Labor Day weekend I was in a beer distributor store and by accident saw Blue Moon Pumpkin Seasonal Ale. I bought it and still had some other beer in my house to finish. Next day at work I told my coworker about and he told me that he already tried it and loved it. That night I came home and opened the first one, next day my reply to my coworker "where was this nectar all my life" :)

dude its obvious that you should not add water at any time to water it down. leave it as is and accept the loss
 
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