Dilution of "too strong" beer

[MarzBock]

I know.. I know.. why in the world would someone want to dilute a nice heavy beer. Well, I DO want to, so lets not debate the whys and what-not.

I went overkill on this last beer (fat squirrel clone). I'm kinda new to the all-grain thing, and I am doing basically partial-mash on my stove-top. This time around, I got insanely good efficiency on the mash extraction. Addition of 5lb malt extract pushed my SG up to 1.088. (!)

I have never made a beer this heavy before. I find that a 6% beer is plenty strong for me, as I like to drink more than one a night. If I try to drink 2 beers at 8.5%, the wife starts to look at me like an alcoholic, and I don't want my new hobby to get on her bad side. Yes, I was stupid enough to proclaim "DAMN! this beer is gonna be really strong", so she is weary that I'm over-juicing here.

I'd like to just get MORE beer out of the deal. I'd like to dilute it at bottling, but I have never done such a thing and I'd like to know if there are any strange nuances involved with adding a gallon or so of clean/sterile (pre-boiled) water. I figure I will get another 10 beers or so by doing this, which is great in my opinion.

Thanks for any input..

Marz

 

[Dwain]

You can dilute it with water. I guess you could add water then check the gravity to get to where you want to be. In the past, I would make a big beer, drink one then move over to a smaller one. Just a thought. - Dwain

 

[devilishprune]

IDK what kind of beer fat squirrell is, but if it isn't very hoppy then you should be okay with diluting it a little. Don't go crazy, and I would suggest doing it on an 8 oz basis first, and then stepping it up to 5 gallons.

Funny thing, I did the exact same thing on my first partial mash. I broke my hydrometer that way, so I just assumed I had no conversion and dumped in all the DME that I had (stupid move). I estimate that it's about 8%+, but I'm okay with that. I dry hopped it and it turned out very well in my opinion.

 

[starrfish]

Bottle as is, split with another lower gravity beer at serving and there is your more than 1 per night. This way if you want a full strength version every now and then... you have them.

Congrats on your "insanely good efficiency."

 

[spiny_norman]

thebrewingnetwork.com did an episode on high gravity brewing. You dilute at packaging, but they stressed that it was important to boil the water first to remove the O2 so that you don't oxygenate the beer. I'd recommend listening to the podcast first.

 

[HexKrak]

If you have access to kegs it'll make this easier. The big names seem to boil keg and carb water, then mix the carbed water with the beer in a seperate keg before serving. If you're botting I suppose you could boil and cool some o2 and split your batch, unless you have room to dilute in your primary.

 

[Mischief_Brewing]

Bottle as is, split with another lower gravity beer at serving and there is your more than 1 per night. This way if you want a full strength version every now and then... you have them.

Congrats on your "insanely good efficiency."

+1 on this.

Any dilution you do with water will not only be diluting the alcohol content (desired in this case) but will also be diluting both flavor and body.

I'd suggest blending it with a similar, lower gravity beer, but that's difficult to do in a bottling bucket...