Topping Up

[tomakana]

Hello all -

I've brewed a couple of one-gallon batches of cider and a couple of one-gallon batches of beer. While I've had a few challenges, the main one I'm focusing on now is volume loss to gravity testing and racking (e.g. avoiding the trub).

With the cider, it's fairly straight forward - since I'm using store-bought cider as my base I go a little more than 1-gallon in the primary, and if I'm short of a gallon after testing and racking, I top up with fresh juice in secondary. I know I'll get some more fermentation, but that's fine as the amount is small. Plus, since I'm not worried yet about precision in the recipes I can do a higher volume and not have a huge impact on the result yet.

For beer, I top up to about 8-10 oz above 1 gallon with fresh water in primary if I'm short post-boil, then test gravity. That gives me a little cushion for later testing to hopefully maximize my yield.

Basically, I'm trying to make sure I maximize my final volume as much as possible since I'm doing small batches - if I'm going to aim for north of 1-gallon with my beer recipes, is it better to increase my pre-boil water volume to account for loss there, or keep doing what I'm doing and add it after boiling? Since these are actual recipes, I'm not sure how far I can veer before noticably altering the outcome.

Thanks in advance.
TPA

 

[ncbrewer]

I think it's more standard to increase the pre-boil volume, but I don't really see anything wrong with topping up. If you have chlorine or chloramine in your water and treat it with campden, you would need to treat the top-off water as well.

 

[tomakana]

Thanks. That's the direction I was leaning. Need to get a feel for how much I lose in the boil. If I'm using a kit that calls for 1.25 gallons to start the boil and I add another .25 gallons, I'm guessing that won't mess with the ingredient ratios that much. Much beyond that and I would think the flavors would start to be impacted.

 

[chickypad]

It depends where your loses are coming from. For example if you had more boil off than expected, leaving you with a more concentrated wort, topping off with water just gets you back to the original target. On the other hand if your recipe was for 1 gal finished, you lose .25 gal of beer to trub, and then top off with .25 gal water you've just watered down your beer adding another 25% volume. The same would apply if you use the ingredients for a 1.25 batch but you actually brew 1.5 gal (then lose that .25 gal of wort not water to sampling, trub, etc). So if the gravity was 1.050 initially you'd now be at around 1.040. Most folks just plan on a higher volume into the fermenter to account for those wort/beer loses, but you have to plan for that in the recipe and add extra fermentables not just water.

 

[applescrap]

Yes, I guess, increasing preboil to me would be better than topping up. You could go all the way until you have very little abv and a watery beer. In the amounts you are talking, there is no big deal. The answer is stop measureing.

 

[tomakana]

Basically, it's a 1-gallon recipe that starts with a 1.25 gallon boil. End of 45 minutes, when I rack to the fermenter, I'm coming up noticeably short of 1 gallon, even though I think I'm leaving little to nothing other than the trub in the pot.

I'll start pushing the starting volume a little higher until I get a handle on the volume lost during the boil. I don't think that will cause too many issues.

 

[applescrap]

^^yeah that sounds like it. The boil off is more than planned for. If you think about your batches I would bet you could figure out your boil off. Still stop measuring though

 

[uncleben113]

Yes, I guess, increasing preboil to me would be better than topping up. You could go all the way until you have very little abv and a watery beer. In the amounts you are talking, there is no big deal. The answer is stop measureing.

Stop measuring? Why would that be helpful? If he's boiling off too much then paying closer attention to boil off rate and intensity of boil would be great next steps but to stop measuring is going the wrong way.

 

[uncleben113]

It depends where your loses are coming from. For example if you had more boil off than expected, leaving you with a more concentrated wort, topping off with water just gets you back to the original target. On the other hand if your recipe was for 1 gal finished, you lose .25 gal of beer to trub, and then top off with .25 gal water you've just watered down your beer adding another 25% volume. The same would apply if you use the ingredients for a 1.25 batch but you actually brew 1.5 gal (then lose that .25 gal of wort not water to sampling, trub, etc). So if the gravity was 1.050 initially you'd now be at around 1.040. Most folks just plan on a higher volume into the fermenter to account for those wort/beer loses, but you have to plan for that in the recipe and add extra fermentables not just water.

^^^ This. Also, if you're losing a substantial amount to pulling off samples to measure, consider returning the sample to the batch. This is a point of contention among brewers at times so you make that call. The worry is that you'll introduce bacteria to the beer through the processes of pulling a sample, testing it, and returning it. As long as your sanitation practices are solid, you should be fine, but again, that's up to you.