Dilute or leave it?

[pms67]

Hi guys, appreciate a little advice from anyone.
I brewed a quick small small batch yesterday, 1 kg of Pale malt and 1kg of Golden Promise and 150g of dextrose, 30g of Simcoe hops , the SG has come out at 1.070 a lot more than I thought, it’s in my FV now fermenting away with Crossmyloof hazy IPA yeast, embarrassingly I don’t know the volume, I haven’t any markers in my FV and just guessed it, I started of with 6 litres and sparged with around 1-1.5 litres
Sounds too high a SG though, I don’t want watered down beer but don’t want a drink too strong, what do you think?

 

[Sadfield]

Dilute.

 

[BeerCat]

Dilute with a hop tea

 

[RichK]

I'd be inclined to dilute it a bit.

I've just done similar with my latest brew. It came out about 6.6% so in went 2L of Aldi finest still spring water bringing it down to about 6% (which is the uppper limit of where I want to be).

 

[pms67]

Ok thanks guys

 

[Hoppyland]

I'd say dilute. But how much .......?
You don't know your initial volume, and fermentation is now vigorous by the sounds of it, so you can't dilute to a specific OG.
Your 6l + maybe 1.5l would presumably be reduced a lot by loss during the boil.
So, where does that leave us?
What I would do is to look at the liquid level in your FV (even if you've no real idea what volume this is) and then dilute based on this.
No matter what the configuration of your FV (cylindrical, cuboid etc) then the volume will be proportional to the depth - assuming it is't tapered or conical. If it is, you're stuffed!! But don't worry about a "standard" plastic fermenting bin not having parallel sides, this shouldn't make huge difference.
So. Your OG is 1.070. But what do you want?
If it was 1.035 then easy: dilute to double the depth in your FV. If you want a higher OG (and you probably will) then the same principle applies: calculate the difference between the observed OG and the desired OG (using only the part of the number after the decimal point - in the above example 070 (or 70) as opposed to 035 (or 35) and then apply that ratio to the depth of liquid in your FV.
Crap, this seems to me to be a lot more difficult to put into words than it is in practice. Never mind: if OG 1.070 then:

For desired Original Gravity of 1.045 then the ratio is 70:45. So, measure your approx depth of liquid in the FV, and dilute so that the final depth is:
Final depth = Original depth/45*70
For any other desired OG simply replace "45" in the above equation by whatever you're wanting to target.
Hope this helps & isn't too condescending. Hey, but even if it is it might help others!

 

[pms67]

Thanks Hoppyland, unfortunately I have a SS FV with a conical bottom!
I am going to dry hop after 1 week and when it’s done I will measure the wort, Appreciate your detailed answer

 

[Hoppyland]

Well, then. All it does is make the maths a tiny bit more complicated.
Basically, you're just combining the volume of a cone with the volume of a cylinder above it.
Oh, bugger, just not worth it is it!
Just dilute the thing a bit & enjoy the product

 

[Drunkula]

I just punched the figures in and 1.070 comes out around 8 litres with those grains. Add another 3 litres and you're down to 1.049 with about 5.2% abv depending on your yeast. Boom.

 

[Cwrw666]

Ferment as is then drink over the summer in a tall glass with lots of ice. Mmm...

 

[pms67]

I just punched the figures in and 1.070 comes out around 8 litres with those grains. Add another 3 litres and you're down to 1.049 with about 5.2% abv depending on your yeast. Boom.

Is there a formula for working out what efficiency that came out at? I haven’t a clue but am interested to know.
Cheers

 

[Drunkula]

Is there a formula for working out what efficiency that came out at? I haven’t a clue but am interested to know.
Cheers

Use BeerSmith or the Brewer's Friend recipe calculator. I probably had it left at 79% when I put it into BeerSmith.

 

[Hoppyland]

Is there a formula for working out what efficiency that came out at? I haven’t a clue but am interested to know.
Cheers

Nope. There cannot possibly be. You say you started out with 6 litres (presumably the total amount of water in the mashtun), and then sparged with 1 - 1.5l . So potentially a total volume of between 7 - 7.5l after sparging. Maybe not, because there may have been deadspace (i.e. volume lost) in either your mash tun or lauter tun. But then presumably you boiled the wort. At this stage, you could have lost a lot of water - or alternatively very little, depending upon how you managed the boil. So you've probably no real idea at all of your final volume at pitching - as you state clearly in your original post. As far as I can see, all you know is that you had an unknown volume of wort at a SG of 1.070. No way of working out efficiency from that.....