Adding water question

[Aschecte]

well I did something stupid. I just bought a 15gallon kettle and brewed on it for the first time yesterday. problem was my boil off was considerably higher and I also had a extroidinary amount of break material loss. So long story short I did a 65 minute boil which started with a little over 7 gallons but after boil off, cooling and trub loss I ended up with about a liittle over 4.5 gallons. this was supposed to be a 5.5 gallon batch. so I added water to achieve this volume. Now heres the real problem I took my gravity reading before adding the water like an idiot. I realized after I added the water that my reading wasn;t accurate. Is there a way o calculate a dilution for a 1.047 gravity that I added 1 gallon of water to and it would equal 1.04? after the water addition. In hind sight I should have just accepted a smaller batch size. Thanks for any input.

 

[aug0202]

Gravity readings are very import! However, I have had too much homebrew during the process and have forgotten about the starting gravity reading. Don't worry the most important part is when fermentation is complete so in a few days take a measurement and repeat every day until your gravity readings are the same then bottle or keg. The only problem with not taking a starting gravity is your estimated alcohol content will be unreliable. But with all that being said you will still have homebrew!

 

[sheeshomatic]

well I did something stupid. I just bought a 15gallon kettle and brewed on it for the first time yesterday. problem was my boil off was considerably higher and I also had a extroidinary amount of break material loss. So long story short I did a 65 minute boil which started with a little over 7 gallons but after boil off, cooling and trub loss I ended up with about a liittle over 4.5 gallons. this was supposed to be a 5.5 gallon batch. so I added water to achieve this volume. Now heres the real problem I took my gravity reading before adding the water like an idiot. I realized after I added the water that my reading wasn;t accurate. Is there a way o calculate a dilution for a 1.047 gravity that I added 1 gallon of water to and it would equal 1.04? after the water addition. In hind sight I should have just accepted a smaller batch size. Thanks for any input.

You actually didn't do anything wrong. Top off water is perfectly normal and people do it all the time. Did you use boiled, cooled water, however? Next time you have to do this, make sure you do, to make sure it is sanitary. You can add it to the primary after all is said and done.

To answer your second question, yes, you can calculate it. If you were at 1.047 at 4.5 gallons and you added 1 gallon of 1.0 water (for sake of argument distilled water is 1.0. You could check the SG of whatever water you used here and plug it in to the formula. Then it's simple.

(1.047 x 4.5g) + (1.0 x 1g) = 4.712+1=5.712

Then divide by total number of gallons, 5.5 = 1.038

By the way - if 1.038 is too low for your beer, you can STILL add some DME that you've boiled in some water to up the gravity some.

 

[kh54s10]

If the fermentation hasn't begun you can take another sample to get your OG.

If you don't need to calculate your ABV you don't really need the OG. Just take readings to make sure your fermentation has stopped before transferring to secondary or bottling.