Adding Water Post Poil

[IloveWorts]

Hello all,

So I am brewing a pale ale this weekend, id like to brew about 8 gallons of finished wort as my boil pot is at 10 gallons. Would it be bad to top off the remaining volume with water that is extra from pre treatment? Will this affect anything? I need help so I can get plastered off my own brew

 

[porterpounder]

Adding water to your beer will cut the bitterness, alcohol content and hop flavor/aroma prior to any dry hopping. If you compensate for that in your calculations, it should be fine.

 

[IloveWorts]

Adding water to your beer will cut the bitterness, alcohol content and hop flavor/aroma prior to any dry hopping. If you compensate for that in your calculations, it should be fine.

Thank you, exactly the answer I was looking for, now the only question is how much do I scale it up? Grain and hop additions...or one one way and the other another. I am playing around on BeerSmith and Ezwatercalculator.

 

[porterpounder]

The easiest way is to carbonate the beer in a keg if you can, take some plain old seltzer water and add a measured amount to another measured amount of beer and see what the flavor is like with different amounts. Then you can adjust accordingly on the next batch. The calculators will be accurate on color, gravity and alcohol content, but can't tell you the aroma, maltiness or true bitterness. Have to do that by experimentation.

 

[Cyclman]

I would simply do the recipe for 10G, then cut back the sparge water. Also, you can add it during the boil as the wort evaporates.