Dilution at bottling

[mooney]

I know that commercial brewers often brew a strong beer then dilute it before bottling. I find that with my brew in my bag method the size of the brew is limited by my 32l pot for the boil. I seam to get less, but sweeter, wart than i calculate every time. Then taking into account trub and yeast cake, i only get about 19l of stronger beer when I'm aiming for 23. So i add more and more water to my priming sugar to boil up to add to the bottling bucket. As grain is cheap and brew days are rare, what are people's thoughts on this method of producing more beer. I just added 4.5l of priming sugar water to my first lager. With an sg of 1.060 it was needing diluted to get what i wanted. Now i have 49 x 500ml bottles when i expected about 40. If i had used 20% more hops and grain i could have brewed 60 bottles in the same pot.

Will this big brew dilution cause any issues.

 

[Qhrumphf]

Commercial breweries doing this are using specifically de-aerated water. Water contains more than enough dissolved oxygen to oxidize the beer. Boiling it will reduce it, and when added with sugar as priming solution, the yeast activity will consume some as well. But it's still enough a point of concern that I wouldn't attempt to deliberately dilute as you're doing.

 

[chickypad]

Why don't you just top off your fermenter on brew day instead of adding it at bottling?

 

[mooney]

Thanks. I had not thought about the disolved oxygen. the only real reason to top off at the bottling stage is to make the most of my brewing bucket. i can leave space for the head during fermentation.