Increased top off water?

[Tocci]

Hi everyone
I have a question about how the quality may have change if the water is added in different ratios throughout the brewing process than it should be.

Let's make it clear:
I have a 60l pot, but I would like to produce around 80l of ferment. So I work with ingredients for 80l. I use somewhat less water for mash, much less water for boiling, and then add steril water before I put it down to ferment until I get 80l.

How bad is it? I used top off water before and it didn't effect quality if added before fermentation. Although now the mash and boiling will be somewhat denser.

Is there anyone who tried something similar? What problems can occur?

Thank you in advance!
Matt

 

[doug293cz]

For one thing, your efficiency will suffer, as you will have less water to sparge with.

Also, the higher gravity wort at boil will affect your hop utilization. But, I'm not an expert at that, so I'll leave it to someone else to explain just what the effect would be.

Brew on

 

[wilserbrewer]

Yes this can work, but as said above your efficiency and hop utilization will be lower.

This works best for a low gravity, lightly hopped brew, and becomes more difficult the higher gravity you're attempting.

I would guess you will need approx 10 - 20% more grain and hops.

Monitor your gravity as you go, and dilute with top up water to reach your desired gravity rather than desired batch size...

I have read that some large commercial brewers do this, even diluting post ferment, and the brewers claim the concentrated beer prior to dilution is outstanding....

 

[chickypad]

I do this sometimes topping off 3 gal of all grain wort to 5 gal in the fermenter. You're essentially brewing a high gravity beer before topping off, so as mentioned you will tend to lose efficiency. For example to get 5 gal of 1.050 beer I need to brew 3 gal of about 1.084 beer. I adjust my efficiency down about 5-6% pts for anything in the 1.075-1.085 range (based on experience). Any higher than that and I have found, again by experience, that efficiency on my system starts to tank. So unless I'm planning to add sugar or DME I tend to do this only on mid-range OG beers.

You can play with the numbers a bit and you'll probably have to experiment on your system to see what batch size you can get out of it. I have done a number of my proven recipes and I don't notice a difference in the finished beer from doing a regular size batch without topping off. I don't brew things like IPA's this way, you will max out your IBU's if you top off a lot and also I worry about diluting hop flavor. Wheats, blondes, and lower gravity Belgians have worked great for me - especially since Belgians usually call for sugar so I can get bump up the gravity that way.