Brewing "the hard way" question: Diluting high gravity beer

[Qhrumphf]

Denny Cann and Drew Beechum did a pretty thorough write up about it in "Experimental Homebrewing". It included a nod to Tasty McDole being the inspiration and had a formula and everything.

Weird though, no mention of adding more minerals to "balance" the dilution water, or using a commercial deaerator. Is that a de-oxygenator, as in boiling or carbing it first?

They mention you can just add the water and force carb it, then drink away 'til it's gone without any problems, just won't have as much shelf life.

I'm not horrendously worried about the water chemistry. For utmost consistency it'd be helpful but wouldn't hurt not to.

IIRC Tasty had some procedure using kegs and CO2 that while likely not as efficenct as the column vaccuum sprayer systems used by pros, was meant to accomplish the same thing. Edit: Looked a what you referenced- boil first, then force carb w/ CO2. Like I said, probably, not as efficient as what the pros do, but still reduces the level of dissolved oxygen.

And "won't have as much shelf life" is because you're.........introducing oxygen. Allowable level for shelf stability is no more than 50 ppb DO, with pros setting a much lower level than that (<10-30 ppb). Don't have the reference in front of me but I don't think boiling gets much below 100 ppb (edit: now that I've got the Water book in front of my- I was incredibly generous- simply boiling at atmospheric pressure only reduces to 4 parts per MILLION), and as it stays exposed cooling afterwards it reabsorbs oxygen all the while. Straight out of the tap it's going to be even higher than that. You do the math.

 

[Magnus314]

I love the scientists and historians on this forum, I really do. No sarcasm. But sometimes they get so serious about simple posts.

Seriously, OP, or whoever else is reading this, just do it and you will be fine.

If you want to boil the dilution water and cool it first, good on you. I use filtered or R/O and I never have a problem.

The diluted beer has the EXACT same mineral profile compared to other flavors and %ABV, but if you're making something that REALLY depends on the added minerals for flavor, add some.

But in the 50+ times I've made 2 X 5.5 gal batches of ~ 7.5% abv "american ale" from many different water sources, grains, extracts and even recipes over the last 10+ years and diluted them back to either 3 corny keg-fulls or in some cases 4 keg-fulls when I've used amylase to make "lite" beer, it's good.

If you have some particular flavor in mind for the end product, and you're trying to match something that 10 million customers expect to taste EXACTLY the same every time...

... OR of you are going to take MONTHS to drink each keg (I only dilute into the keg, then force carb), then by all means de-oxyegenate, measure and re-add minerals, and worry about it more.

But my standing advice for the guy who OP'ed, "can't I get MORE BEER?" the answer is, "Yes. You can."

Don't sweat it. Troubleshoot using all this great advice if the beer turns out less than great.