should I add water

[chormang]

So here's the deal. I am making an irish stout from a brewers best extract kit. Because I didn't know any better, I dumped my hot wort into my plastic fermenting bucket, then topped that off with water to 5 gallons, then put the fermenter in an ice bath in the sink to cool. This was almost a week ago, and since then things seemed fine. There was plenty of activity in the airlock which has now subsided, but I noticed something odd. My fermenter is now only full to about 4.2 gallons. Does anyone have an explanation for this? Nothing ever overflowed out the airlock, so I didn't lose it that way. It couldn't have evaporated that much volume, could it? Should I now add water to bring it back to 5 gallons, even though its pretty much done fermenting?
thanks

 

[Yooper]

So here's the deal. I am making an irish stout from a brewers best extract kit. Because I didn't know any better, I dumped my hot wort into my plastic fermenting bucket, then topped that off with water to 5 gallons, then put the fermenter in an ice bath in the sink to cool. This was almost a week ago, and since then things seemed fine. There was plenty of activity in the airlock which has now subsided, but I noticed something odd. My fermenter is now only full to about 4.2 gallons. Does anyone have an explanation for this? Nothing ever overflowed out the airlock, so I didn't lose it that way. It couldn't have evaporated that much volume, could it? Should I now add water to bring it back to 5 gallons, even though its pretty much done fermenting?
thanks

How's it taste, and what's the OG you had? If it tastes great like it is, don't dilute. If it's too "hot", then you can boil some water, cool it, and then add it.

 

[sithspitt]

you don't want to water it down do you?

 

[chormang]

I haven't tasted it yet, but I imagine when I do I won't learn much because I don't really know what a green, uncarbonated stout should taste like. I guess I'm ok with just leaving it as is and maybe getting an extra strong beer, but do you guys have any idea how this might have happened? Could it have lost all that volume through evaporation while it was cooling, or during the fermentation?

 

[Yooper]

I haven't tasted it yet, but I imagine when I do I won't learn much because I don't really know what a green, uncarbonated stout should taste like. I guess I'm ok with just leaving it as is and maybe getting an extra strong beer, but do you guys have any idea how this might have happened? Could it have lost all that volume through evaporation while it was cooling, or during the fermentation?

You wouldn't lose volume during the fermentation (unless you had a blow off, and it went out through the airlock), so I'm thinking you were a bit short on the volume in the fermenter.

What was the OG? To me, that would be the best indication of whether or not to add water.

 

[chormang]

Unfortunately, I didn't measure the OG. What would I do if I had? Do you mean to compare the measured OG with the OG given in the recipe?

 

[Munsoned]

Not that it makes up .8 gallons, but the hot wort should shrink about 4% from boiling temps down to room temps or so...

thats like ~.2 gallons right there, give or take...

 

[Yooper]

Unfortunately, I didn't measure the OG. What would I do if I had? Do you mean to compare the measured OG with the OG given in the recipe?

If the OG was higher than it should have been, you could add water to make it the same as the recipe indicated. I"d recommend doing that from now on- check the OG. If it's off, either you've added too little water or didn't mix well, for example. If you know that, you can add more water before you add the yeast to "even" it out. Even now, if you said your OG was 1.080, but the recipe indicated 1.060, I'd suggest adding water to the 5 gallon mark. But if you don't know, then you can really adjust it. I guess you just have to go by taste.

 

[chormang]

thanks for the advice, everyone. Next time I will definitely be more careful. The good news is that I took a taste and it seemed pretty good to me. I may or may not add a little extra water when I add the priming sugar, haven't decided yet, but I feel like its gonna turn out pretty tasty either way.

 

[Yooper]

thanks for the advice, everyone. Next time I will definitely be more careful. The good news is that I took a taste and it seemed pretty good to me. I may or may not add a little extra water when I add the priming sugar, haven't decided yet, but I feel like its gonna turn out pretty tasty either way.

Glad to hear it! Sounds like a good beer.

 

[mmc1]

I did something similar with my first brew. I purchased 5 gals of bottled water to brew with and did not think about boil off. I didn't even realize it until I bottled it and came up short. Its been in the bottle for about 3 weeks and turned out great.