Adding water to reduce FG?

[Kershner_Ale]

My Munich Helles finished at 1.020. Not sure why as I used good ferm control, pitched a proper amount of yeast and added O2. I brewed it on Natl Homebrew Day at someone else's house, and thus out of my normal routine / element so who knows what happened.... Brewed / fermented an Oktoberfest side by side with it and its great.

Anywho I would like to enter it in a comp but I can already predict the obvious flaw for the style. Other than being too sweet it is not bad and is a clean lager. Is it possible to add a measured amount of boiled / cooled water to reduce the FG?

 

[hercher]

In theory, yes. But I would want to analyze what happened before I did that. Can you describe your brew process that day, your recipe and any other details? Perhaps there is something else you can do to get your FG a little lower.

 

[Kershner_Ale]

Without looking back at my notes, here's what I remember. 90 min boil, 148 F mash for 60 min, yeast starter on stir plate two days before brew day. 93% pils, 5% Munich, 2% melanoidin malt. Cooled and ran into carboy, put in ferm fridge overnight to bring temp to 45 F and let trub settle, racked to new carboy to remove trub, ran pure O2 for one min and then pitched yeast. After one day I slowly started ramping temp up to 50 F. I remember after two days the ferment was going really strong while the Oktoberfest beside it was slow. I thought "Wow, looks more like an ale ferment." Maybe infected? But I don't detect any off flavors. Used WLP830 yeast for the Helles, WLP833 for the Oktoberfest. Both lagers fermented four weeks.

I've used the same process for several Pilsners and they've finished well attenuated. Just not sure what caused the yeast to stop early on this one.

I only reason for inquiring about adding water is I thought if I could bring the FG closer to style without effecting other aspects of the beer, that this entry in the comp would score slightly higher than it would with a higher FG. This category for this particular comp would win me points towards a year long competition, so just looking to add a few more points to my total.

Cheers

 

[hercher]

There is nothing in either your recipe or process that would suggest a reason for under-attenuation.

My concern about simply adding is water is that it doesn't really change the balance of the beer. The sweetness - bitterness ratio would be the same. What you need to do is convert more sugar. Have you considered raising fermentation temperature up a few more degrees and rousing your yeast, or perhaps adding more yeast (a very neutral, highly attenuative strain).

 

[cavalrymsh]

Not sure how much time you have before the comp, but have you thought about blending with another light(er) beer as an option?