Beer Forum

I am about to transfer my latest brew to my secondary in a few days. It had an OG of 1.070 and about 80 IBU's. I forgot to factor in the amount of beer my hops would absorb and it came in at just 5 gallons. I would like to fill a keg with this and dont mind loosing a few gravity points if I add water. Could I take half a gallon of bottled spring water and boil it for 5 minutes, cool it, add it to my secondary, and rack on top of that?

I dont know if this is a factor but, I will also be dry-hopping this brew. Please let me know if it is ok to do and any opinions/experience you have on the matter.

Cheers.

You can do that without issue. You can also use distilled water right out of the jug.

BadRock wrote:You can do that without issue. You can also use distilled water right out of the jug.

Thanks bro. I took a gravity reading on it yesterday and it is at 1.012 and its still bubbling every minute or so. I figure that, even with a half gallon added, it should still be around 7-7.5%.

If you got the beer you were shooting for, but just not enough of it, I would leave it alone. A agree you could add water, no prob, but my experience has always been to go for the target beer you were trying to make.

I did that with my first barleywine and I was like damn, it tastes good, but i could drink it now. I wanted something I could drink 6 months from now. I ended up doing some crazy shit like adding honey in the secondary and it came out really nice though.

My triple decocted Roggenbier finished at the right FG (was not too sweet), but had a CRAZY heavy mouthfeel. It just wasn't quaffable. I took a pint of the finished beer and added some filtered water to taste to figure out the percentage I would need to add. I ended up adding a quart of boiled and cooled water to the keg. Tastes perfect now.

As Doc has mentioned several times - if you don't get the volume you want - oh well. When you change your beer for volume discrepancies you will never make consistent beer. If you are changing it because you overshot your OG, then that's different.


Mylo

How long of a brewday was your triple decoc out of curiosity?

Fucking all day.... probably 8-9 hours flame on, to clean up.

Mylo