Adding Back Water?

[natelindner]

Hi all,

I have brewed two batches of beer now, and both times I've used the amount of water indicated to me by hopville.com for the mash and sparge and both times the final volume going into the fermentor is much lower than it should be. Both times I just added back the difference into the fermentor before pitching the yeast. Is this acceptable? Does anyone know why the volumes given to me by hopville didn't end up being correct?

 

[Clonefan94]

It's not a major problem, but depending on where your water is going, could chage the OG quite a bit. I would find out where that water is going, rather than just relying on topping off with extra water all the time. If your boil off rate is more than you expected, then you are probably fine. Meaning more than likely you hit your numbers OK and just boiled off more, to produce a more concentrated wort. Adding water to this would be fine.

But, if your system is losing the water in dead space in your mash tun, or your grain absorbtion numbers are off, then you could be diluting your wort by adding top off water. Are you hitting the pre-boil voumes you expect in your boil pot?

 

[Datgreenstuff]

I dont know.. but I would check other sites to see if hopville.com is the same as theirs. I dont think topping off will affect it to much. Possibly offflavors at worst. But then again im just brewing my first batch mtself

 

[hnsfeigel]

It's not a major problem, but depending on where your water is going, could chage the OG quite a bit. I would find out where that water is going, rather than just relying on topping off with extra water all the time.

This.

I have to top off because I brew a concentrated wort (stovetop) and add water into the fermenter for my total batch volume. My volumes are generally right on with what brewzor calc expects them to be though. Finding out if it's disappearing in the mash vs the boil will tell you if topping off or recipe adjustment is the fix.
For instance, the wort collected from mash yesterday (Bee Cave PA, woot) read at 1.070 for the 3.8 gal I collected. If I go into my recipe builder and ask it what the OG would be for a 3.8 gal batch of the same recipe, it says I was right on. Once I transfer it to the fermenter, it will be the 1.051 it was supposed to.
But if you're getting less from your mash than you expected, you may need to bring up your mash or sparge volumes to get the gravity you need.