Volume change

[Bigbens6]

My friend had an issue with his first batch, all he has is a 5 gal carboy and he lost alot of volume to blow off...

His PLAN is to cook his 5 gallon extract kit like normal, but only fill to 4 gallons, pitch yeast, ferment, then add the last gallon of water in his bottling bucket.

My thought is that the yeast wont like the change in gravity, concentration of alcohol might get too high, but i am relatively new to this stuff also, so what can i say to him, is this perfectly acceptable? Or is this beer death waiting to happen?!?!

 

[mbird]

It seems like a reasonable solution and may in fact work fine but I don't think he should brew "like normal". If he does he will be wasting a gallon of wort and also when he goes to add a gallon of water later he will be diluting his beer considerably. I would first suggest that he buy a 6 or 6.5 gal. carboy or fermenting bucket. If that isn't possible and he still wants to follow thru with his idea then he should make a concentrated wort and make the appropriate adjustments to his hop schedule to make up for the loss in bitterness utilization. Then when he dilutes later, he will be closer to the final gravity and bitterness of the style he was trying to brew.
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Beer Diary...

 

[Bigbens6]

He intends to do a normal 2 gallon extract boil, so the initial boil will be normal, but instead of adding 2.5 water to get a full 5 gal he is only gonna ad like 1.5 gal, so his initial gravity will be realllly high, that can tbe good can it?!?!

 

[Yooper]

I wouldn't do that, but it might work out ok for him. Make sure you tell him to boil and cool the water he adds to the bottling bucket, so he doesn't aerate the beer at that point.

I think it would just be easier to buy an ale pail, or a bigger (the correct sized) carboy, instead of trying to do that. He might get some blow off, even with only 4 gallon in there, and then he'd be diluting the beer even more.