watered down strong beer

[Shemek]

Hi, I'm wondering if anyone has heard of making a light 3-5% beer by brewing a strong 1.075 and then adding half of that carboy to a keg 2/3 full of water? That's what I do now and I don't see the difference to undiluted beer that was brewed to be the same alcohol content.

I also only do a 5-10 minute rapid boil with 2 oz hops and then dry hop later on with 6 oz and find that to be bitter enough. I use gelatin and collagen, and have a total of 2 weeks from stove to pitcher and have a clear and quaffable beer without discernible taste imperfections. Anybody heard of doing either the watering down or the short boil?

 

[max384]

I don't know about watering it down. However, hops added earlier in the boil are for bittering. Late hop additions add flavor. Dry hopping adds aroma. So, it seems as though you're only covering the aroma and flavor aspects, not bittering.

 

[Shemek]

Yep, technically no bittering, however I doubt that means zero IBU's. I heard that bittering is to balance sweetness. In my case I don't really want either. Late only additions is part of hop burst style of brewing, no? I was wondering more about the short boil and if anyone else boils for only 5-10 minutes and the pros/cons.

 

[Cyclman]

If you're going for a hopbursted style, which does add bittering, it just takes way more hops, I can think of no reason why this wouldn't work.

As for fermenting, I would add the water before fermentation, the lower gravity stresses the yeast way less.

 

[Calder]

Big brewers add water to their fermented beer. It allows them to make more.

With brewing a high gravity beer and watering it down, you will get more of the yeast flavors. This can be a good or a bad thing depending on what you are after.

When you add water to dilute the beer you really should use cooled boiled water. Water has alot of O2 in it which you don't want in the beer. Boiling it will get rid of most of it. If you drink it quick, it probably doesn't matter.

I suspect your beers is lacking balance from bittering. If everyone drinking it is OK with it, then OK.

 

[Ilan34]

Won't the short boil put you at risk for DMS?

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[Shemek]

I was worried about DMS at first but read everywhere that that is only a concern in brewing from mash and that extract has already had most of the DMS driven off in the manufacturing process. The recipes call for extract additions in the last 5-15 minutes. DMS would be quite an obvious off flavour if it was there.

Watering down works for me because I need about 8 gallons per week for the wife and I to have about 4-5 beers a day each. Every other week I will brew a standard 5 gallon batch for 5 gallons of beer. Either way I get a lot less of the yeasty flavour since I started filtering through 1 micron and when I rack only crystal clear beer.

Not sure if there are any other tips to lowering the yeasty flavour. Even slight yeasty flavours make people think "this is homebrew beer, and that's what it will always taste like". Anyone try adding simple sugars to the primary after fermentation reaches final gravity and stirring it up for additional fermentation? I did and am still not sure if this helps or hinders the yeast from digesting the less desirable malt leftovers when the yeast becomes lazy towards the end.