All Grain Brew - Topping Up With Water

[Ross Bacon]

Hi All

I'm about to attempt my first all grain brew.
I was aiming for a 23L Brew, Unfortunately the boiling kettle I bought is only 20L even though advertised as larger.
Is it ok to carry out the mash and boil process based on the smaller amounts and then top up the brew in the fermenting bucket to the amount I would like wth water?
I understand that this will have an effect on the ABV and will throw out any calculations based on the 23L.
My thought is that if I topped up the brew to 23L and then took a gravity reading i should be able to work out the ABV by using the previous mentioned gravity reading and the FG.
There will also be effects on the taste due to the fact I'm diluting the mixture, so long as I know it's ok to top up the brew with water and can do trial and error in future brews to adjust the taste to my liking but as i've seen through multiple medias this is the brewing way and even if I did have a bigger kettle I would always be tweeking recipies to suit my taste.

Hope all makes sense and thanks for any help you can offer me.

Cheers

Ross

 

[Sandimas]

I brew this way, size your recipe for your target volume 23L but you'll need more hops to achieve the same bitterness as you'll be boiling less volume, there's a handy online calculator here Would suggest a 17/18L boil in a 20L pan to leave a bit of room for hops IBU Calculator Beer Bitterness - Brewer's Friend

Or just brew to a smaller volume. there's no rule that says all brew have to be 23L.

 

[colm89]

If you set up an equipment profile in Brewfather and include 3 litres (or more accounting for boil off) of top up water then the calculations should adjust the recipe to suit.

 

[Ross Bacon]

If you set up an equipment profile in Brewfather and include 3 litres (or more accounting for boil off) of top up water then the calculations should adjust the recipe to suit.

Thanks for this, I've been playing with Brewfather, I thought I would be able to do something like that but couldnt see where.

Cheer
Ross

 

[Ross Bacon]

I brew this way, size your recipe for your target volume 23L but you'll need more hops to achieve the same bitterness as you'll be boiling less volume, there's a handy online calculator here Would suggest a 17/18L boil in a 20L pan to leave a bit of room for hops IBU Calculator Beer Bitterness - Brewer's Friend

Or just brew to a smaller volume. there's no rule that says all brew have to be 23L.

Thanks for this, I'm glad to know it's ok do
Cheers

Ross

 

[colm89]

Thanks for this, I've been playing with Brewfather, I thought I would be able to do something like that but couldnt see where.

Cheer
Ross

In the recipe page, under the equipment heading, there is a pencil icon on the right hand side. Open that. Set your batch volume to the final volume including water (in your case 23 litres), and scroll down a bit to the line called fermenter top up. Add your 3 litres in there, and it’ll scale your water volumes and grain etc to account for this.

 

[Drunkula]

I used to do 23 litre batches with a 14 litre pot. Remember to campden the diluting water if you didn't treat all your water beforehand.

I'm doing a post-fermentation dilution today and have to boil water to get rid of the dissolved oxygen.

 

[Ross Bacon]

In the recipe page, under the equipment heading, there is a pencil icon on the right hand side. Open that. Set your batch volume to the final volume including water (in your case 23 litres), and scroll down a bit to the line called fermenter top up. Add your 3 litres in there, and it’ll scale your water volumes and grain etc to account for this.

I had a good look this afternoon and found the page and managed to create my own equipment list, it all makes sense now. Thanks for the help
Cheers

 

[Ross Bacon]

I used to do 23 litre batches with a 14 litre pot. Remember to campden the diluting water if you didn't treat all your water beforehand.

I'm doing a post-fermentation dilution today and have to boil water to get rid of the dissolved oxygen.

Never even heard of that, something else I’m going to need to read up on haha
Cheers

 

[Sandimas]

Never even heard of that, something else I’m going to need to read up on haha

Neither have I and I've been brewing over 10 years, what's that all about?

 

[Wynne]

I brew this way, size your recipe for your target volume 23L but you'll need more hops to achieve the same bitterness as you'll be boiling less volume, there's a handy online calculator here Would suggest a 17/18L boil in a 20L pan to leave a bit of room for hops IBU Calculator Beer Bitterness - Brewer's Friend

Exactly what I do. I brew 36 litres in a 30 litre Burco Cygnet. I calculate the ingredients for 36 litres into fermenter and add a 20% more bittering hops.

@darrellm that’s what many commercial brewers do. It’s called high or very high gravity brewing depending on the wort gravity. It needs the right yeast strain, vitality and pitching rate to cope with the higher osmotic pressure and alcohol concentrati9n when fermenting at higher gravity. Dilution after fermentation requires deoxygenated water as @Drunkula says to avoid oxidation off-flavours in the beer. With dilution pre-fermentation, the yeast mop up any dissolved oxygen in the dilution water and the yeast is not put under stress.

 

[crescent city Mike]

If you have limited volume in the kettle, why wouldn't you simply top up the fermenter before pitching the yeast?

 

[Drunkula]

Neither have I and I've been brewing over 10 years, what's that all about?

Almost everybody in this country will have had post-ferementation diluted brews. It's how most of the macros make the most of their fermenters. Brew to a higher ABV then water it down at canning.

I'm doing it as an experiment. A Mild that finished at 1.024 because of the high mash and then gets watered down later. At the moment I'm just pushing a 4% down to a 3% something but will see how far I can go without it turning into watery muck. I do this kinda tripe so you don't have to.

 

[Tim Wilkes]

There's a very good description of that method on @MyQul 's brew days I think.
Speaking of whom, is he OK? Not heard from him in a while.

 

[iz_g]

Not quite the same, but shows how you can actually incorporate this to improve your brewing: