When to add water to wort?

Hello, first post after my first attempt at extract brewing!

I realized a few days after I finished brewing (and after reading this forum), that I did not account for enough water evaporation and my final volume was less than 5 gal. No biggie...!

So for the next time I brew, when is the ideal time to add water to bring up my volume to 5 gal?

I've read that if you add water after the wort is cold, that this could affect my OG reading (not mixed thoroughly). Should I be adding hot water as I come to the end of my boil so that it has time to mix and not affect the reading? Or does mixing the cool wort and water in the primary long enough still give an accurate enough reading?

I added mine before aereating it by pouring back and forth so It definately got mixed very well.

I wouldn't add water unless you overshot your OG and ended up with less than 5gal. You are just diluting it by doing so and it will be a smaller gravity.

It really is difficult to get a decent OG reading with an extract w/top off water batch no mater what you do, but as long as you are dilluting to your exact volume that the recipe calls for, you will hit the recipe the OG calls for. Extract recipes are nearly foolproof, it only gets tricky in Partial mash and all grain brewing where YOU are responsible for converting your own starch to fermentable sugar and there are a lot of variables that can affect that.

having said that there are many ways to add water to the wort.. Most people transfer the wort somehow into the fermenter, THEN add top off water til they hit the target volume of their recipe (usually 5 or 5.5 gallons) Then the stir, or shake as much as possible, or just use some method to aerate the wort and water (which will mix on it's own during fermentation anyway) then they pitch the yeast.

Some people add cold water first, then add the wort, with r without cooling it. The difficulty with that, is that due to the variability of your stove in terms of how much boiloff you may have in 60 minutes, if you were just dumping what you thoght was the amount of top off water, you could end up overshooting the volume and having potentially weaker beer..

One way that some people, including me have done, is to add 1 gallon of water to the fermenter, then add the wort from the kettle (hot or cold) and then once you see the volume so far you could THEN top off with as much or as little water you may then need....

But like almost everything else in brewing there is no "best" or "preferred" way of doing things...they all work great, and the final product is beer....Usually the only Prefferred method, is the one that BEST works for you.

So i usually encourage new brewers first starting out to try different ways, and work on your brewing process...try things out, pick the ways that work the best for you and cast off those that don't.

I have a whole thread on doing that for the process of bottling...I and my friends offer all sorts of tips to "pimp your process" but that idea, tweaking things til they work for YOU applies all over this hobby!

So have fun! ANd I hope this helps!