Pages: 1
Water in secondary - is it too diluted now?
So I might have just done something incredibly stupid by adding water to my secondary fermenter. I was brewing a honey nut brown and I was worried about getting a ton of blow over so I left some space in my primary to account for this (I was going out of town for a few days and didn't want to come back to a sticky mess, as this batch can really punch out a lot of brew in the first few days). When I transferred everything over to a secondary, I noticed that I was significantly short, so I added water (about a half gallon). I'm afraid now that I have ruined this batch by diluting it - in my mind I was thinking that I didn't quite bring it up to five gallons in the beginning so adding water now won't make a difference, but now I am thinking otherwise. Perhaps this batch will be a lesson in not doing stupid things, but I am at least hoping that something drinkable will still come out of this experience. I appreciate any feedback, especially if you have made this mistake as well.
It'll certainly be more diluted than intended but not ruined. I hope you used water that had been boiled and cooled, otherwise the batch may be contaminated.
Either way, I wouldn't stress over it. Just see how it comes out and take it as a learning experience... Thats all you can do now.
HEY...
NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT... ADDING AHALF GALLON WILL DILUTE YOUR BEER SLIGHTLY... BUT IT WILL NOT RUIN IT. THE ORIGINAL GRAVITY WOULD BE SLIGHTY LESS. THEREFORE, YOUR FINAL ALCOHOL CONTENT WILL NOT BE AS HIGH. HOWEVER, THE DIFFERENCE WILL BE SO SLIGHT, I WOULD NOT WORRY ABOUT IT... THERE IS A WHOLE LIST OF CALCULATIONS FOR THIS IN SEVERAL OF CHARLIE PAPAZIAN'S BOOKS....
As it is, you probably left your SG rather high by not topping up your carboy or fermenting bucket anyway. Say the brew was designed to be a 5 gal brew, and you fermented it at 4 gal. Your SG would have been 20 to 25% higher than the recipe called for. Hence, when you added the hopefully sterilized water back in, you simply lowered your FG and your diluted your alcohol content back down to where it was intended to be to start with. Or something like that. Relax. You'l be just fine. If your really worried, ship me the beer and I will run it through my "comprehensive chemical analysis lab" and send you back the testing results. Certified and everything. 
Pages: 1
Search Home Brewing Knowledge Base
Custom Search
|