Busted Recipe

[Dadgumbrewer]

I boiled up an extract recipe for a 5 gal batch of california common, put it in the fermenter two days ago, and now realize I left out half of the liquid extract during the boil step, so the final beer will be 2.8% alchohol instead of the 4.9% I intended.

Would adding a liter of vodka bring the alch level back up to about where it should be without screwing up the flavor balance? If this can work, when should I add the vodka - during the fermentation process, or just before bottling?

 

[ak-71]

I don't know about vodka, but I added DME (boiled in some water) on day 2.
In my understanding it won't be exactly the same flavor as if it was in the boil, because hop utilization was different during the boil, but it would ferment just fine.

 

[ThreeDogsNE]

+1 on adding the DME. If you want it to taste like a California Common, you will have somewhere near the right amount of yeast growth to produce appropriate esters. That requires fermentables. Two days isn't that far along into fermentation. I've waited that long for yeast in lag phase. How are your yeast doing? Are they still in lag, or at high krauzen? Not done yet, surely? Adding extract now seems like your best bet.

BTW, hop utilization should be a little higher with less extract in the boil.

 

[Dadgumbrewer]

Thanks for the DME advice - next time I forget fermentables during the boil process that's how I will fix it.

Three days in the fermentor, looks like the process is slowing down after couple of vigourous days. Normally, slowdown doesn't happen until 6 days or so. I think I'll bottle after the 7th day without any modifications and see how it goes.