Diluting Beer

[nicklawmusic]

I brewed a Smoked Porter and came in slightly over gravity (I was shooting for 1.056 and hit 1.061). I'd like the beer to be 5% (Beersmith suggests I'll reach 6.1% using WLP005). My batch size is 24.6 liters (6.5 US gallons).

Should I add water to the fermentor or when I bottle the beer? I've read you should do it when you bottle, but I'm struggling to get my head around working out the gravity. For example, I know if my starting gravity is 1.061 and I diluted using 2L of water, I would get a starting gravity of 1.056 (so I'm guessing I add 2L at some point)... but I can't get my head around the final gravity reading which will give me an accurate FG.

How would I work out a specific ABV if I'm diluting?

Hope that made sense!

 

[Yooper]

Aside from the ABV, I don't know if diluting the beer will give you what you want.

I'd take a sample of the beer, and put it into a glass and add water to it to see if it improves the beer. It probably won't- it will reduce the body and the flavor and aroma quite a bit.

If you still want to, once you take the FG and see what the actual ABV is, then you can dilute accordingly. You need the FG first, though.

 

[nicklawmusic]

I've had to do it before on batches but never had an issue with it being thin and watery. I was in a 10 BBL brewery last week and they diluted their beer to reach target gravity. If you're doing it commercially in the UK, and you give the beer a name, every other batch with that name needs to have the same ABV within a 0.5% (or 0.3%, I can't remember!) tolerance. I'm doing it commercially on a small scale.