Brewer's Best Porter- 4'ish gallons

[bumpnzx3]

I brewed the above beer Saturday afternoon eventually it's going to get bourbon soaked oak in the secondary. I was in a hurry to get finished up because I had someplace I needed to be. I brewed, chilled, and transfered as I always do. By Sunday morning at about 5am when I got up- I already had some good bubbling going on. However- I realized that I had forgotten a step the night before. I didn't take an OG reading, which means I also didn't had water to get it up to 5gallons. By looking at the carboy I am at about 4.25 gallons. I am certainly not planning to add water now. However- I am curious about my options. From searching, I have about 3 options:

1) Leave it- I will end up with a slightly more potent beer when I am done
2) Add a little more yeast- from a few threads I read on here the higher gravity that I currently have might be hard on my kit yeast.
3) Use more water than usual when I boil/disolve the priming sugar when it comes time for bottling.

I am thinking of going with option 1 or 3 (maybe a 1/2gal of water). I most likely wouldn't have worried about it had it not been for the fact that this doesn't seem to be as violent of a fermintation as the stout I did a couple months back. Right now there's probably about 1"-1.5" of foam on top of my beer. The stout had a fair amount more than that.

Thoughts?

 

[TipsyDragon]

i would go with all of the above. no point in risking oxidation and contamination now. your higher grave wart will need more yeast to ferment properly. adding more water at bottling will dilute your brew down to the proper ABV.

the difference in the foam could be because it is cooler now than it was "a couple months back"

 

[Yooper]

I'm puzzled- if you're under 5 gallons now, why not add the water now? I don't get it. If you want a stronger flavored beer, you could leave it, but I'd top up to 5 gallons. If you're a paranoid sort, you could boil and cool the water before adding it.

Also, no need to add more yeast. If it's fermenting, it's fermenting. It's fine.

 

[bumpnzx3]

For some reason- I figured adding water in the middle of fermintation would be a bad idea since I wouldn't have a good way to stir it w/o aerating it too much? If not- I will boil a little water tonight, cool it, and siphon it in there and call it good. My thinking on adding the additional 1/2 gal or so of water at bottling time would be that I would have the beer in the bottling bucket and that would be easier to stir w/o too much aeration.

 

[COLObrewer]

#1 is easiest, that's probably what I would do, I do it all the time. But then I'm not into the whole meticulous calculation thing . . . . unless I'm testing something new.

 

[Yooper]

You don't even have to stir it up- just add the water through the opening, and stick the airlock back on. The action of the fermentation will stir it up just fine!

 

[bumpnzx3]

That works for me. I guess I will add a little water to it tonight. Thanks for the tip(s).