Is there a fix for this?

[apreswho]

i quiet foolishly mixed up my OG and FG ie: i diluted my wort too much prior to pitching yeast...its been less than a week but i took a hydro reading to check fermentation and im at 2.6%...is there anything i can do to get this up to a "regular" or reasonable level? are there any fermentables i could steep into the fermenter other than sugar? i dont necessarily want it any sweeter

 

[KevinM]

Any fermentable is going to be sugar. It won't necessarily make it more sweet, because if the sugar is fermentable, then it will ferment out and become alcohol. It has a good chance of reducing the body of your beer though.

Just don't use maltodextrin or lactose, since those are unfermentable sugars and would leave sweetness. You could (not recommending this, but using it as an example) add plain table sugar and it'd ferment and increase the alcohol.

You could potentially add LME/DME. What was your recipe so people can check it and see what would be the best to add to try to reach your originally intended flavor?

Alternatively, you could just keep it as a light beer, just finish it off and start on the next batch.

 

[apreswho]

Wellllllllll it was a bit of an interesting mix up, and i should have known right from the get go. I made my own recipe based on a few clones and the calculator at hopville, and i had planned on making a 3 gallon batch. Fementables were 3.3lb Light LME, 1 lb Munich, 1 lb carapils, .5 lb Aromatic and 2lbs Clover Honey at flameout. I added water to hit the gravity i need (though i was looking at the wrong one!) and thats what diluted too far. It was intended to be an Imperial IPA, and now I've hardly got a beer at all! Any help is greatly appreciated, i'd love to not waste this batch!

 

[Golddiggie]

If there's any room left in your fermenter, you could boil up some more DME and pitch that in... Or, pull out some wort, cook it with DME and pitch it back in (once cooled)... Since it's been less than a week, there should be plenty of yeast in the rest of the wort to go to town on the fresh sugars... I would only pull out a couple of quarts (at most) of wort if you go that route...

What was the original recipe? Depending on what you put in originally, would be what you can add to build it up to where you really want it now...

 

[apreswho]

Golddiggie, thanks for the response! My fermentables are in my response prior to yours (sans hops of course). What kind of quantities are we talking here? of DME

 

[Golddiggie]

Looks like another 3# of light DME would get you into the same area as you were looking for (up to an OG of 1.066)... I would give it a short boil time, basically just enough to get it all into solution (so <10 minutes)... I've not needed to add that much DME to a wort post-boil... I have added a lot of malt extract in 2 or 3 gallon's of water (adding more water post boil to get my 5 gallon target batch sizes)... I would imagine that you should be able to get it all to work in ~1 gallon...

Adding just 2# of DME would get your OG to about 1.058... So 1# of DME could give you a ABV difference of 0.8% ABV...

Adding 2#=5.7% ABV
Adding 3#=6.5% ABV

 

[apreswho]

well im at 5 gallons already...if i add the 3# of DME, could i essentially add it to as little water as possible for the sake of concentration? or would that heavy the beer too much? or are what you essentially saying is for every pound of DME add a gallon of water to this new boil?

 

[RM-MN]

Whoa! Back up a bit and tell us what kit or recipe you used and how you got your hydrometer reading and how much wort you had at the start. Don't add anything yet. If you started with a kit that should make 5 gallons and you have 5 gallons of wort now, there is nothing wrong.

 

[passedpawn]

I added water to hit the gravity i need (though i was looking at the wrong one!) and thats what diluted too far.

When you say you were looking at the wrong one, to what are you referring?

 

[KevinM]

Earlier, he's listed his ingredients and said it was a 3 gallon batch, but it's been diluted to 5 at this point.

OG estimate at 3 would be 1.066, and with the same ingredients at 5 gallons is 1.040 (I think) so even if not touched, it would still be a beer, just a lighter 3.5% beer. Not really an IPA.

I just question what would the outcome be if 3 pounds of extract were made into a syrup using as little water as possible and added. Mostly in how the flavors would be different. Even if using a bit of the week old wort to dissolve the extract.

 

[Golddiggie]

I was saying to pull out 2-4 quarts of weak wort, heat it up (brief boil) adding the 2# or 3# of light DME to it, cooling that, and then pouring it back into the primary. You'll still be at close to 5 gallons total volume (hence the brief boil, to avoid losing too much volume) and it would be more of a 5 gallon version of you 3 gallon recipe...

OR, you could just let it ride, bottle it up, drink it down, and chock it up to experience building... After all, it WILL be beer, just not what you had intended it to be... You could also follow the other recommendation to reserve it to mix in with a heavier/bigger beer later... Although, that would mean leaving it in your fermenter until you've actually brewed the other beer and it's ready for blending. I've not blended anything yet, so I won't give any advice on how much to blend of what. I think it's done more to taste, so you should use something graduated, making notes of how many parts of each you blend, see how it tastes, and go from there.

 

[RM-MN]

By just adding DME, wouldn't that make the beer very unbalanced? An Imperial but not an IPA any more?

 

[RM-MN]

If yeast hasn't been added yet, then adding DME and hops and then boiling to extract the bitterness from the hops would seem to me to restore the original intended beer. Wrong?

 

[Golddiggie]

Cooking just 2-4 QUARTS of the wort shouldn't put the brew off balance... Of course, it WOULD have been a lot better if he had done this sooner, like before pitching the yeast in.

I think he'll be closer to what he was going for, but it still won't be the same as if he had done it right from the start. It could be a good idea to add a little more hops, depending on what IBU's he was going after...

Or, just let it ride, chock it up to a learning experience, and make sure to not make the same errors again...

This is one of the reasons why I like Beer Smith... You can print out the BrewSheet which has your steps and such built into it. It also lists what your OG should be (with a space for what it actually was) and more... At all of $21 for the license (after the 21 day free trial period) it's a bargain. Especially when you consider how many batches it will save just by being used. Plus, it makes tweaking recipes, on your own, far easier. You'll have a much better idea of what you'll get than trying to crunch numbers on your own.

 

[apreswho]

what basically happened was the intended OG was meant to be 1.08 and the final was meant to be 1.02, and i misread (my own damn writing!) and diluted the wort up to 1.024. Wasnt a kit at all, just a 3 gallon recipe i made that i wanted to try out.

Golddiggie, i really do appreciate all the help! so as someone had mentioned before, will adding DME late in the game change much about the beer itself? also is there a benefit to the DME instead of LME? sorrt for all the questions, just going through my options

 

[Golddiggie]

You'll use less DME than LME to get the same gravity points.

You'll need to figure out how much more hops you'll need to get it up to the IIPA IBU level... Or just have it as an IPA with the kick of the imperial...

Adding 3# should get you to an OG of 1.077 (~7.5% ABV). Adding 4# would get you to an OG of 1.086 (~8.4% ABV) with 5 gallons of wort/beer... Without knowing how much hops you added, it will be difficult to calculate your IBU's at 5 gallons...

As it stands now, you SHOULD get at least 4.5% ABV out of the wort... So closer to an English IPA... Just a bit lighter in color and ABV... So... Chick beer...

If you're not using GOOD software, I would suggest getting some... I favor Beer Smith since it has all the features/functions I want/use and I can have it on two computers without any licensing issues (they specifically allow you to install it onto two computers). I can tweak a recipe twenty ways to Sunday before I brew it... I can also go back and see what I need to do if I miss my targets... Since I have it on my main home system, and my laptop, I can do that when I'm brewing at home, or someplace else. Makes things so much easier come brew day if something doesn't go to plan. Or if you want to adjust something on the fly.

 

[apreswho]

Thanks again! i was using something similar, i just misread my own writing! the recipe was sound, unfortunately my sense of sight was not apparently haha, thanks again for the help!

 

[Golddiggie]

Damnit, I had Beer Smith still on All Grain... OG numbers are a bit off... Unless you actually did a mini-mash with the grain, use the numbers from my earlier posting (last night/early this morning)...

2-3# DME will get you into English IPA OG range
4# will get you just inside IIPA OG range...

I would figure out what your IBU's actually are, and just get the OG to at least match that style range...