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Lots of headspace in secondary

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paranode

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Joined
Mar 8, 2007
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Location
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I racked my stout to secondary today and because I didn't account for all the boil off and neglected to top up with enough water, I am short in the secondary, maybe around 4 gal and change. This brew has pretty much stopped activity (fast yeast) so I'm wondering what I should do...

Leave it alone because there will be a little CO2 or top up with water or what? Don't want to get it ruined by oxidation but I don't want to add water if that's going to mess up the beer either. What about adding a very tiny amount of sugar, would that be bad?

Advice? :eek:
 
The only downside I can see to adding water is that it will water down your beer. The up side would be that you'll make more beer. Since the beer has about one volume of co2 in it, there is a layer of CO2 protecting the beer from oxidation. I doubt the exact size of the head space is important.
 

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