Beginner mistake, can I add water to my secondary fermentation?

[tdubnicoff]

Home Brewer rookie mistake. Ok so I didn't have a 2 gallon primary fermenter.(which the recipe called for) I just used a 1 gallon jug with the stopper. It's bubbling along nicely and I'm looking to plan the next step when I realize, my first fermentation needed to be in a 2 gallon container not 1! Oh well so now what for my secondary fermentation? If I siphon the brew out it will be more like half of a gallon. Do I add water and fill the 1 jug for the second fermentation? Or do I just make whatever I can salvage without sediment? Your thoughts?



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[mlanoue]

Haven't been in this situation before, but I think that May be what you have to do. I think you should put the gallon of water in the new fermenter and gently rack the beer onto that. Proper sanitation and all that. Not going to get into the issue of what kind of water is okay to add. Opinions may vary there.


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[MindenMan]

I did something similar a while back, I undershot the volume. After fermentation had started, I added the "correct" amount of water, only to find out that the yeast had a mind of their own, and attenuated to the first O.G., not the corrected one with the extra water added. I tried and tried, but the yeast wouldn't start back up. Maybe I didn't try hard enough.. but, in the end it was still drinkable beer.

 

[masscarriers]

From what I understand you did a full 2 gallons recipe with 1 gallon water? If that's the case, your OG must have been twice (or maybe less) what your should have been expected. We're missing some info, is it an extract recipe, partial mash? What was your protocol?

also, this is not a secondary fermentation but more like a secondary conditioning phase. If it's bubbling well and then stops before you decide to rack your beer in secondary, most fermentable sugars are already transformed into alcohol so just adding water to secondary will most likely only dilute what happened in primary. If it's still bubbling, you'd better leave it there for now.

 

[tdubnicoff]

Beautiful, thanks for the great info. The beer is... a ready for it...a gluten free beer recipe. I made it 7 days ago and only started bubbling 3 days ago and it has pretty much is a trickle now. My original SG it was 1.052. So from what I gather adding water will be ok?


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[progmac]

if you add water to beer that is done fermenting, add distilled water. other waters have oxygen, which you do not want in your end product.

if you double the volume of a beer with an OG of 1.052, it will be very weak.

 

[tdubnicoff]

Oh gosh I don't want weak beer!


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[masscarriers]

Going from 1.052, depending on the yeast, process, and lots of other factors, you might have a beer around 5%. If you decide to dilute your beer with water you might just end up with 2.5% beer. You could just leave it that way and bottle it despite having only half the quantity you aimed for.

 

[tdubnicoff]

Ok maybe I will do that. My fear was that I'd have too much space for air. But from what you are saying it's ok and weak beer is worse! Thanks for the help!


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[brewmeister13]

Why move it to secondary? Unless it is going to see prolonged aging, you can leave it in primary until it is ready to bottle.

 

[tdubnicoff]

I left it in the primary and bottled it from there. I have to say it was mighty tasty. Can't wait! Thanks for the idea.


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[brewmeister13]

No problem. Glad to hear it worked out for you.