Help! Pre boil OG way high!

[Gonefishin]

I'm brewing right now. Beersmith shows est preboil G to be 1.036. I'm at 1.055. Normally I wouldn't worry but this is for a wedding and I don't want to get everyone sloshed before the meal is served. I can't find any correction for this. My Keggle is to the top now but I was thinking to add some hot water from my HLT as boil off occurs. How muc to add? I wanted 1.045 into my fermentor. Thanks

 

[Transamguy77]

I would wait till the end and check and add water at that point, or boil longer and adjust your hop schedule. So if you decide your now going to boil for 90 mins don’t add any hops till 30 in. And do as much of a vigorous boil as you can.

 

[Gonefishin]

Thanks TAG. Any idea how to figure water amount?

 

[petemoss]

If you are trying to decrease the gravity and don't have any room in your boil kettle, then maybe top off water after boil is the way to go. I don't know how to calculate how much you would need though. Maybe add, measure, add, measure, etc.

 

[Gonefishin]

Thanks Pete, I cooled a sample and measured with my hydrometer and its at 1.045? I calibrated my refract. and it equaled the hydro reading for the first runnings. Go figure. Anyway, I started drinking so it "just doesn't matter"! I'll worry later. Maybe just have an uber standing by at the wedding.

 

[Sechelter]

Hey Gonefishin,
Looks like you're out of the woods (good news). FYI, to answer your original question: if you assume that fresh water has SG 1.000, the proportion of fresh water you'd need to add would be 1 - ((FG - 1) / (OG - 1)), where FG is your desired gravity and OG is your current gravity. So if you had 1.055 SG and wanted 1.045 SG, it would be 1-(0.045 / 0.055) or 18% water, 82% original wort. You could add this water to the fermenter(s) after the boil ... not ideal but a viable act of last resort, and not uncommon with some brewers with smaller kettles.

 

[Transamguy77]

Glad things got figured out for you! And thanks Sechelter for that math, easier than trial and error.

 

[Gonefishin]

Thanks for the math refresher! I couldn't find that anywhere and stressing wasn't helping at all. I added about 3-quarts of boiling water during the boil. My Gravity going into the fermenters is 1.047 so all is good. One of these days I'll get beersmiith dialed in. I get really frustrated with it when every brew misses some target or other. Thanks again.