what is with adding water at the end...?

[rachael]

just finished my first batch ever.. made it through most of the process all right, until the end when the instructions were to add water until it's 5 gallons..? i used a 5 gallon recipe and a 4.5 gallon pot - when all was said and done i had about 3.3 gallons in the fermenter. why would i want to dilute the beer with water? what happens when you use a 5 gallon recipe without 5 full gallons?

i want the beer to be strong in flavor.. and most of the kit homebrews (as this was) tend to be lighter than i prefer.. maybe it was nuts but i thought maybe if i don't dilute it it will taste better?

thx for any comments..

 

[william_shakes_beer]

Many of us that brew indoors cannot boil 6.5 gallons (which is what you need to start with to end up with 5) It's called partial boil and top off. The brewing software adjusts the hops additions to compensate for the different utilization. Basically you go through the entire process witha smaller volume of water, then top off and stir thoroughly at the end.

 

[rhamilton]

Stick to the recipe. If you want stronger beer, modify the recipe beforehand.

 

[spazjdm]

Stick to the recipe. If you want stronger beer, modify the recipe beforehand.

+1 good advice

 

[unionrdr]

It reads like you tried to top off in the BK.? You say you got 3.3G in the FV?

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

just finished my first batch ever.. made it through most of the process all right, until the end when the instructions were to add water until it's 5 gallons..? i used a 5 gallon recipe and a 4.5 gallon pot - when all was said and done i had about 3.3 gallons in the fermenter. why would i want to dilute the beer with water? what happens when you use a 5 gallon recipe without 5 full gallons?

i want the beer to be strong in flavor.. and most of the kit homebrews (as this was) tend to be lighter than i prefer.. maybe it was nuts but i thought maybe if i don't dilute it it will taste better?

thx for any comments..

It will be different. Not necessarily better, not necessarily worse depending on your palate. But, it will not be balanced as designed.

 

[Bmorebrew]

If you don't top off like the recipe says, the beer will not taste the way you expect it to (read: style).

 

[AdamPag]

You're also only gonna have 3 gals of beer instead of 5. Every gallon of beer is approx 10, 12oz bottles. Your OG is going to be WAYY higher than predicted, and unless you really aerated your wort well, you may have limited O2 for the yeast to feed on. Adding that extra 2 gallons of water to top off also adds in the O2 thats inside water and it helps further chill your wort quickly, if you add 3 gals of 75* wort to 2 gals of 55* top off water you'll very quickly get a reduced temperature of your total volume in an ideal pitching range (those numbers should actually get you around 65*, beer smith will give you exact numbers)

 

[steelerfanatic7]

Im pretty new but I'm thinking its gonna be way to strong (taste). Sort of like concentrated juice before you add water. Just like the others said, the recipe is designed to be a certain strength and balance, i imagine this tasting terrible. If you want a stronger beer just create a recipe or get a recipe for one.

 

[Trokair]

Trust the recipie. I just put my first batch in the fermenter and I had to top up a little more than the recipie to hit 5 gallons but when I did the hydrometer confirmed that I was right on the OG for the recipie. I have no idea what it would be like without topping off but I'm guessing very thick and syrupy.

 

[microbusbrewery]

Another thing to consider, different yeasts have different tolerances to alcohol. You essentially brewed a batch with a higher OG than the recipe was designed for. High gravity usually requires higher pitching rates for a healthy fermentation. So your yeast are probably stressed and it probably won't dry out as much as it should, so you're likely to have a finished product that's on the sweet side with a focus on malt (lacking bitterness to balance it out).

 

[AdamPag]

We're gonna need Revvy to chime in on this, but if you brewed up and pitched your yeast today (im going by what your posting says) you MIGHT be able to still top off, but wait for others to confirm that

 

[rideincircles]

I am wondering if I added less water than needed on my beer. I added a little over 2.5 gallons of water once I put it in the carboy, but I had no way to measure the volume of the carboy without having checked the 5 gallon water line. I also checked the gravity of the wort, but not the wort with added water and sort of missed that step. I think all is fine, if anything it's around 4.5+ gallons. It's right above the 2nd line from the top around the 6.5 gallon carboy. It did take around 4.5 hours from start so i am not sure how much water boiled away.

 

[rideincircles]

The wort gravity was 1.11 before i added the 2.5 gallons (maybe 2 cups extra). Not sure how to compute that.

 

[Yooper]

Im pretty new but I'm thinking its gonna be way to strong (taste). Sort of like concentrated juice before you add water. Just like the others said, the recipe is designed to be a certain strength and balance, i imagine this tasting terrible. If you want a stronger beer just create a recipe or get a recipe for one.

I don't know if it would taste terrible, but it would be more bitter (from the concentrated hops) and sweeter and heavier.

Think of it this way- if you're making a gallon of kool-aid, but use 1/2 the water isntead of the full gallon, it doesn't taste better. It actually tastes worse, because the amount you used was designed for a full gallon. The same would be true of beer. Too much malt and too many hops in a smaller batch wouldn't be "stronger" in a good way.