American macro beers are often made at a higher strength and then diluted to the light abv level. At the homebrew level you could make an American lager (1B) and dilute it to an American light lager (1A). Can you pull off the same thing with the Czech beers and make a premium lager (3B) and dilute it to a style appropriate 3A?
Can you dilute a Czech premium pale lager to make a Czech pale lager?
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Alan Reginato
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Idk, because it would involve a lot of saaz, or other noble hop, to make a concentrated beer to dilute later. The brewhouse efficiency would be lower in this case. That could be an issue. Unless you top up with water before flameout.
Yes, but.
I’m not a LODO nut, but unless you do something, your dilution water will be 9 ppm dissolved oxygen, which is vastly too much for finished beer. Pros doing high gravity brewing are careful to deaerate (and sterilize) their water.
I’m not a LODO nut, but unless you do something, your dilution water will be 9 ppm dissolved oxygen, which is vastly too much for finished beer. Pros doing high gravity brewing are careful to deaerate (and sterilize) their water.
I say yes. After watching a National Homebrew Conference seminar in, I want to say 2017 called "In it to Win it", I learned about diluting beers to make other beers for comps. The trick though, they do it in bottles. The guy brewed a Munich Helles, then when bottling would add 2-4 oz of carbonated water to the bottle before adding the beer, depending on what style he was making. I want to say with 2 oz in the bottle he entered the Helles in International Pale Lager and and American Lager, 4 ounces was entered as America Light....and he medaled in every one of the categories.
I have tried it myself and sure enough, 5 times I entered a diluted Helles into International Pale Lager, all 5 times it medaled, 3 1sts and 2 3rds and one of the 3rds was a 44 point beer. As American Lager, it did not medal as much, but got a couple.
But I gather you are talking in the fermenter or keg...and again I am going say yes. Was just talking last week with someone who does it, with the exact beer you want to dilute. Can't find the thread, but he basically gets 9 gallons post boil, 5 gallons goes into one fermenter for say the Czech Premium, 4 gallons goes into the other fermenter with 1 gallon of distilled or RO water to dilute it to. I am sure he brews that first beer to be at the top or even above the max for OG, IBUs etc. so that when diluted the 2nd beer will not be too weak. Doing it in the fermenter also gives you the opportunity to dry hop if you think it needs a little more hop aromas. The guy who does this is another home brewer who competes and wins around the country.
I have tried it myself and sure enough, 5 times I entered a diluted Helles into International Pale Lager, all 5 times it medaled, 3 1sts and 2 3rds and one of the 3rds was a 44 point beer. As American Lager, it did not medal as much, but got a couple.
But I gather you are talking in the fermenter or keg...and again I am going say yes. Was just talking last week with someone who does it, with the exact beer you want to dilute. Can't find the thread, but he basically gets 9 gallons post boil, 5 gallons goes into one fermenter for say the Czech Premium, 4 gallons goes into the other fermenter with 1 gallon of distilled or RO water to dilute it to. I am sure he brews that first beer to be at the top or even above the max for OG, IBUs etc. so that when diluted the 2nd beer will not be too weak. Doing it in the fermenter also gives you the opportunity to dry hop if you think it needs a little more hop aromas. The guy who does this is another home brewer who competes and wins around the country.
My understanding is you boil the water first which sterilize and drive out O2, then add carefully add to keg without introducing oxygen. I haven’t do t this before but I think that’s how they do it
Thats some great info! When you diluted the beers in the bottle were you bottle conditioning or bottling from a keg?
Here’s a link. Four of the Best Ways to Deaerate Your Brewing Water, Depending on Your Budget
It seems that some gas stripping is recommended in addition to the boiling step, to get sufficiently low O2. Not sure how this plays out on the homebrew scale.
Maybe using a vacuum degasser that they use in winemaking would work well but if I try it I think I’ll stick with boil and then carbonate the water to minimize DO like the last person in that link, definitely not looking to buy any of that expensive equipment in the article. Thanks for the link!
I am curious what the actual process would be here. My understanding is that boiling water will drive off most of the oxygen, but that it will quickly redissolve oxygen as it cools. Would you need to transfer boiling temp water into a keg, then purge with CO2? Would any anti-oxidants (ascorbic acid? metabisulfite?) help?
Note that another option would be to dilute in the fermenter before fermentation starts, if you wanted to split a batch into two fermenters and produce two different ABV beers. I think hop levels and bitterness would be fine, but you could boil hops in the water to create a tea. Calculating added bitterness and flavor might be a challenge to work out.
That is actually a brilliant idea. I can make a medium strength and a low strength beer this way without a second fermenter. Thanks for the idea! Will try it with my next beer! Bottle conditioning will take care of the little additional oxygen.
good luck!
Bottling from the keg, which is why I used carbonated water to not lose carbonation. If bottle conditioning you can probably get by with boiled and cooled distilled water.
Even better idea, I will also steep some black malt in the water, shortly boil it for sanitation and than will create a few bottles of dark mild this way
. Bitter, low abv bitter and dark mild from the same batch of beer. Awesome. .
Sounds good to me! Gets me thinking, I have a Best Bitter I just kegged...I wonder if I added Sinamar (liquid Carafa extract) to bottles to turn it into a Dark mild?Even better idea, I will also steep some black malt in the water, shortly boil it for sanitation and than will create a few bottles of dark mild this way
I had the same idea while writing it. Downside is, sinamar does not provide much flavour if any.
I think part of the reason to brew the beer at a higher strength and then dilute it is you have a healthier fermentation at the higher gravity. An American lager that starts at 1.065 will have a healthier and more complete fermentation than one that started at 1.035 for example and if you dilute the strong beer to then equal the weaker one the diluted beer will be dryer and less of a chance for fermentation off flavors. At least I think that is part of it, once again not an expert lol
I am not sure that is true, or at least I have never found that in my batches. The big guys do it to more efficiently use their fermenters to make more beer.
Ah that makes sense, not sure where I heard that before
Yeah, as I looked at the Dark Mild guidelines after posting to see if that would work, I was thinking that. Plus even if darkening the beer, it's not going to turn a medium to high bitter beer into a malt forward one. Back to the drawing board! Maybe I will just enter the Best Bitter in all three Bitter categories and see what happens.
Did you boil and carbonate water for this or did you buy some flavorless sparkling water?
Why??????
Just add some Miller Lite. After all, it’s “A Fine Pilsner”.
Flavorless sparking water. But if you had a spare keg, you could definitely use your own carbonated water.
This is the answer I was hoping for, I wanted to be able to get away with some store bought sparkling water lol
