Can I add top up water during active fermentaion?

[nutty_gnome]

Anyone have any heartburn about adding 1 gallon of boiled and cooled chlorine free water to primary after 3 days of fermentation? Measurements indicate that I have less than 4.5 gals of wort in the primary and the OG was kinda high. I'd rather add it while yeast are active than in secondary. Am I breaking any rules here? I would siphon of course for splash free transfer.

Comments welcome.

 

[Yooper]

If I wanted to bring my OG down, I'd definitely add water. I wouldn't think twice about it. You can either do the math in your head, or use a "dilution tool" in some brewing software so that you get the OG correct.

 

[dragonlor20]

Anyone have any heartburn about adding 1 gallon of boiled and cooled chlorine free water to primary after 3 days of fermentation? Measurements indicate that I have less than 4.5 gals of wort in the primary and the OG was kinda high. I'd rather add it while yeast are active than in secondary. Am I breaking any rules here? I would siphon of course for splash free transfer.

Comments welcome.

I wouldn't mess with it unless you were seriously concerned that something was wrong with the beer as-is. If you planned and made a great beer, why try to milk more out of it at the cost of the flavor? If you overshot all of your targets in a way that puts the beer out of style, then yeah, get your money's worth...

My 2cents.

 

[nutty_gnome]

I added the gallon. The OG for an American pale ale (dosed with AHS's alcohol booster) at 4.25 gallons was way to high and would have made a >7% ABV beer. I added the cooled water late last night. Activity is still ongoing; the wort didn't seem to care.

I found myself very conflicted about this whole thing. I reflected on why the low volume was bothering me so much. After all, this is not a world-altering issue, yet I was pissed over it. In the end I decided it wasn't about being able to accurately hit numbers or gravities or any of that technical stuff. I was simply super pissed at the thought of dragging out all the bottles and bottling equipment in a few weeks and only getting 1.5 cases out of it. Apparently If I can't get at least 2 cases out of a batch, I can't be bothered.

Anyway, thanks for the input.

 

[Zen_Brew]

7% would definitely be high for an American Pale. All your flavor would have likely been more concentrated as well. I probably would have done the same for the sake of a more balanced beer.

There are some purists who say when you are done, leave it be. In the end it is your beer, and you need to be happy with it. If you can make the changes with low risk of damaging the beer then go for it.

 

[bruno_78]

Rule of thumb is not to add water during fermentation because of oxidation and spoilage. If you need to dilute your beer, do it at bottling or secondary, and exactly the way you did: boiled and cooled.

 

[Zen_Brew]

Rule of thumb is not to add water during fermentation because of oxidation and spoilage. If you need to dilute your beer, do it at bottling or secondary, and exactly the way you did: boiled and cooled.

Those are good suggestions. In this case the OP stated he was going to siphon to minimize splashing. At day 3 of active fermentation the yeast would likely take up any O2 introduced anyway. Minimal risk I should think.

 

[nutty_gnome]

Those are good suggestions. In this case the OP stated he was going to siphon to minimize splashing. At day 3 of active fermentation the yeast would likely take up any O2 introduced anyway. Minimal risk I should think.

That was what I thought too. Some of the yeast may still feel an urge to procreate and they can take up the little O2 added.

 

[bruno_78]

But don't we need to take into consideration the life cycle off the yeast?

Only during respiration does a yeast cell actually take up any free oxygen. Since respiration only lasts approximately 4-8 hours, and considering that he is in day three of the process, it seems unlikely that much free oxygen will get used up by the yeast.

All this is hypothetical, of course. I'm sure your beer will turn out fine!

 

[tnlandsailor]

Fermentation is such a key process in brewing, I think it's probably a bad idea to mess with it at any stage prior to bottling. Since you are bottling and have to add boiled and cooled priming sugar anyway, I probably would have opted to just increase the amount of water added at this step rather than chance anything during the critical primary fermentation process.

It's always worth a taste before you alter anything. You might have liked it and it might have been a great IPA instead of an APA. You never know. I would refrain from making batch altering modifications for the sake of a few extra bottles of beer. Just a thought.

Prosit!