Adding water right before botteling . . .

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GLoBaLReBeL

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Hey guys,

I am finishing up my second brew and I'm thinking I don't have enough wort and I want to add more water but its already been 2 weeks in the primary and I'm moving to bottling in like 5 days. I was going to fill up a 5 gallon water jub and then pour it into my bottling bucket and mark the height and then when I go to move the wort into the botteling bucket, I was going to just add some water to the bucket until I reach that line . . . is this a bad idea?
 
IMO, yes I think it is bad idea. Why would would you want to dilute and water down your beer? If you are only doing it so that you can get 50 bottles instead of 48, I would say go with the 48.

If you are worried about running out of beer just brew more ;)
 
OK, well now that makes a little bit more sense. If I were you I would just use less sugar. I am guessing that you brewed this from kit and they just shipped you a bag that had the priming sugar in it? In most cases the amount of sugar that they send will give you right around 2.5 volumes of carbonation.

How much beer (after you pitch the yeast it is no longer wort) do you think that you will be bottling? Also what kind of beer is it?
 
good questions. I have a brown ale, same circumstances, probobly will be just a little over 4.5 gallons. Should I still add the recommended 3/4 Cup priming sugar to bottling bucket or should I scale down linearly??
 
You'll end up with less than 5 gallons for sure, since you will leave the trub (and some beer) behind when you siphon. You should be ok using the amount of sugar provided without adding additional water.
 
I for one never use volume measurements when it comes to dealing with dry ingredients. I have found that it always best to go weight, and in this case grams. I used to have a chart somewhere that listed the carb guidlines per style but cant seem to find it right now. Also there is a handy formula for figuring how much sugar to use to get the volume of CO2 that you are shooting for. Some digging is in order on my part...
 
The difference between 4.5 and 5 gallons is 1/10th. So take that 2.5 volumes of co2 and add 1/10th and you have 2.75 volumes. Not that big of a difference IMHO. I say just run it as if it was 5 gallons.
 
So I could not find the table that I was looking for, but this will set you in the right direction, click here.

Also I may be making this seem a bit more difficult than it actually is. I am just a tad bit anal about styles and the volume of CO2 that I want in any given beer. However like WIP said, 4.5 versus 5 gallons really isnt going to make that much difference.
 
I think it may actually be more like 4.25 gallons. It is the Creame Ale from Northern Brewer. The OG is 1.040.

What I find odd, is that on their site the beer is a VERY light Yellow lager color, yet mine is much more brownish, more like an ale. SDo, I'm a little confused.

Now, when I was steeping the specialty grains, I was actually steeping like a tea bag. I would let them sit in the kettle for like 5 min and then pull it out of the kettle and let the water seep out, and then dip it again for another minute or two and pull it out again and do this a lot throughout the 20 minutes at 155 -165. I then pulled them out and continued with the rest of the brew.

Now, should i have just let them sit in the pot for like 15 minutes and then pull it out like once or twice in the last 5 minutes to steep the juices out of the grains? I was never really clear on this part.
 
The steeping doesn't make that big of a difference. The word steeping is just a term for soaking. I always leave the grains in the bag in the water the whole time, then pull them out and pour a couple quarts of 160* water over them and let them drain. The color shouldn't be that far off, but that could be from a number of things, including the site being wrong, the extract carmelizing etc. No worries man, just keep going like normal, don't add water, and bottle as if it was 5 gallons. You won't have bottle bombs unless it wasn't done fermenting when you bottle.
 
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