Adding water to your secondary. Good... bad... crazy?

[noremorse1]

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.

[BadRock]

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

[noremorse1]

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%.

[Chupa LaHomebrew]

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.

[Mylo]

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

[rhino777]

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

[Mylo]

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

Mylo