Watering down beer

[clib]

Yes, but that's at the start. Certainly by bottling stage if you get oxygen in your beer you'll ruin it.

I don't boil the water I add. Secondary fermentation in the bottle or keg will scrub that amount of oxygen. Avoiding oxygen is more crucial if you force carbonate. I once had a beer judged by the Cloudwater quality controller and one comment was that there was no oxidation. She told me that oxidation is a common problem in home brew. I said that I didn't feel I had a problem with it cos the yeast deals with a small amount in the bottle, you just have to avoid being careless about oxygen. Through the fermentation and packaging process.

 

[MickDundee]

How do you think priming in the bottle works if not with oxygen present? Carbonation to occur requires fermentation, by it's very definition - fermentation is the conversion of sugar to alcohol and CO2 which requires the presence of yeast, sugar and Oxygen.

Yeast likes oxygen at the start of fermentation, but finished beer doesn’t.

Try pouring your beer into the bottles from a height with no tubing/bottling wand. The beer will go purple/brown and taste like Sherry/cardboard over the course of a couple of weeks.

 

[ChrisR73]

How do you think priming in the bottle works if not with oxygen present? Carbonation to occur requires fermentation, by it's very definition - fermentation is the conversion of sugar to alcohol and CO2 which requires the presence of yeast, sugar and Oxygen.

Fermentation is anaerobic, it is incomplete metabolism of sugars which basically splits the molecule in half.
In the presence of oxygen yeast mitochondria break the molecules down further, just as humans do. This means no alcohol production and oxidation of the wort which produces some very nasty off-flavours.

 

[clib]

Oxidation ruins a beer for sure. But how often do you open a bottle of home brew and discover it's oxidised? You have to be pretty careless in my experience. The only time it happened to me was when I got gushers and as a last resort I emptied the bottles into a bucket and re bottled it. Got chucked away.

 

[dad_of_jon]

Just wondered if there are any views on adding water to fermenting beers?

I've got a couple on the go (Youngs American IPA and my Australian Monster) that are both currently over 6.5% with a brew length of 21.5 litres (I habitually brew a bit short). Is there any reason why adding a litre of water to the fermenter now to slightly nudge them down, would be different to using more water at the start of the process?

you could also add less non flavored sugars such as glucose & dextrose if they are part of the recipe and they just add abv.

 

[Hoppyland]

How do you think priming in the bottle works if not with oxygen present? Carbonation to occur requires fermentation, by it's very definition - fermentation is the conversion of sugar to alcohol and CO2 which requires the presence of yeast, sugar and Oxygen.

Sorry, but this is not correct. Yeast is capable of both aerobic and anaerobic metabolism of sugar. Aerobic fermentation occurs during the first phase of fermentation, where oxygen is believed to contribute to the growth of yeast cells. Once the oxygen is used up, anaerobic fermentation occurs. Purely aerobic fermentation of glucose produces no alcohol: instead the metabolic products are water and carbon dioxide. Anaerobic fermentation of glucose by beer yeast produces carbon dioxide and ethanol, fortunately for us! There is no dissolved oxygen in beer at the end of fermentation, and there should be little or none in your bottled beer if you want it to store well and retain its character (in fact, you can get oxygen-scavenging crown tops to help exclude oxygen from the bottles). The carbonation of beer in the bottle should be an anaerobic process.

 

[Random Badger]

With all this talk about oxygen, would it be a good idea to use carbonated water if adding after primary fermentation?

 

[foxbat]

Or a couple of cans of john smiths, no flavour impact on your beer and guaranteed to water it down.

 

[RoomWithABrew]

@randombadger

I like that idea using carbonated water. F'll Boil it first to drive off oxygen and then carb it up in the sodastream add the priming sugars in there and then dose away. Also a good option when mixing up or diluting down finings and back sweeteners before pressure injection into the keg. Thanks

 

[Davegase]

How do you think priming in the bottle works if not with oxygen present? Carbonation to occur requires fermentation, by it's very definition - fermentation is the conversion of sugar to alcohol and CO2 which requires the presence of yeast, sugar and Oxygen.

From what I've read, the yeast needs oxygen to reproduce so that there's enough yeast cells to ferment the wort, but when you bottle you don't want the yeast to
reproduce! You just want it to produce the carbonation and there will be enough cells left to do that!!

 

[Wynne]

How do you think priming in the bottle works if not with oxygen present? Carbonation to occur requires fermentation, by it's very definition - fermentation is the conversion of sugar to alcohol and CO2 which requires the presence of yeast, sugar and Oxygen.

I think you are mistaken @DrunkDelilahBrewery. Fermentation does not require oxygen, respiration occurs in the presence of oxygen. As you correctly say, fermentation is required to produce ethanol and carbon dioxide from sugars.

As far as diluting beer with water is concerned, it does not need to be deoxygenated (e.g. by boiling) if added at the start of fermentation but does need to be deoxygenated if added at after fermentation to avoid premature staling of the beer through oxidation.

 

[Stu123]

Be very careful what you say about Boddingtons.

Whatever it is like now, it was once the finest brew ever made. And nobody has ever been able to reproduce it. Brewed by wizards, I believe. Wizards who disappeared into the night, when Whitbread bought the brewery.

Twas indeed a fine brew. As a youth we used to stop at the brewery lodge on the way into manchester on a friday night. My mates uncle worked in the lodge, they had a had a hand pump direct to the brewery supply, wagon drivers were allowed a pint on the way out to their delivery round, then they had at each pub they delivered to!,

 

[clib]

Sorry, but this is not correct. Yeast is capable of both aerobic and anaerobic metabolism of sugar. Aerobic fermentation occurs during the first phase of fermentation, where oxygen is believed to contribute to the growth of yeast cells. Once the oxygen is used up, anaerobic fermentation occurs. Purely aerobic fermentation of glucose produces no alcohol: instead the metabolic products are water and carbon dioxide. Anaerobic fermentation of glucose by beer yeast produces carbon dioxide and ethanol, fortunately for us! There is no dissolved oxygen in beer at the end of fermentation, and there should be little or none in your bottled beer if you want it to store well and retain its character (in fact, you can get oxygen-scavenging crown tops to help exclude oxygen from the bottles). The carbonation of beer in the bottle should be an anaerobic process.

This is interesting thanks, it's not something I have ever looked into properly. What I don't understand is that I cannot avoid getting oxygen in my bottles as I use a basic bottle wand set up. But I don't experience obvious oxidation issues, and I sometimes drink bottles that are 2 or 3 years old. I do sometimes detect oxidation in these old bottles, but not ruination levels. My deduction from this has been that the yeast in the bottle is 'processing' the oxygen in some way (I have no scientific credentials) and thus enabling the beer to keep well. Purely guesswork on my part. I've not looked into it because there hasn't been a problem to solve.

 

[dom]

With all this talk about oxygen, would it be a good idea to use carbonated water if adding after primary fermentation?

Interested in this idea as I might be looking at watering down a beer slightly at the point of bottling. Does carbonated water not have dissolved oxygen in it, or were you thinking of carbonated water more just as a replacement for other ways of carbonating?

May also just do what clib suggets and use bottled water. The water would be about 9% of the total liquid in the bottles, which doesn't seem extreme, so hopefully won't get oxidation issues. Just checking that sounds safe enough based on your experience @clib ?

 

[clib]

Interested in this idea as I might be looking at watering down a beer slightly at the point of bottling. Does carbonated water not have dissolved oxygen in it, or were you thinking of carbonated water more just as a replacement for other ways of carbonating?

May also just do what clib suggets and use bottled water. The water would be about 9% of the total liquid in the bottles, which doesn't seem extreme, so hopefully won't get oxidation issues. Just checking that sounds safe enough based on your experience @clib ?

It does sound safe enough to me. Oxidation is one of those topics - there is so much talk of the danger of it, and so much time, money and effort seems to go into avoiding it, but I don't experience it much at all despite not doing a great deal to avoid it. I do transfer beer carefully. I've assumed that fermentation in the bottle utilises the available oxygen, but it's just a guess and could well be wrong. Anyway, if you add water carefully you will be fine. Tap water is fine. Boil and cool it if you want to be super safe.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Be very careful what you say about Boddingtons.

Whatever it is like now, it was once the finest brew ever made. And nobody has ever been able to reproduce it. Brewed by wizards, I believe. Wizards who disappeared into the night, when Whitbread bought the brewery.

Not true - the family ruined Boddies, 5-10 years before Whitbread bought them. Ron Pattinson did some digging into what happened back in March - it seems to have been a mix of things in the late 702 amd early 80s, including changing adjuncts as some went out of production, changing from traditional barley varieties, using older hops, and perhaps a conscious decision to make it less bitter to appeal to a wider market.

https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com...0-08:00&max-results=20&start=39&by-date=false
And going back to the OP - high-gravity brewing is fairly common in the commercial world, but the kind of 2x dilution used for stuff like Carling is rather looked down, the odd litre here or there is rather different. But yes, things do end up tasting different when brewed up at 8% or so and then diluted down to 4%.

 

[An Ankoù]

For what it's worth, I commonly brew low gravity beers over-strength and then dilute them. So I'll brew a 12 litre stove-top mild or bitter and then liquor back to 20 litres, for example. When i first started doing this, I added the water after the yeast had taken hold and this invariable stressed the yeast, causing it to stink. The beer eventually cleared itself up, but it was never quite the same. I now dilute before pitching and I haven't had the problem again. I think commercial brewers "liquor back" when fermentation is over, so, again, the yeast doesn't get stressed.

 

[clib]

Not true - the family ruined Boddies, 5-10 years before Whitbread bought them. Ron Pattinson did some digging into what happened back in March - it seems to have been a mix of things in the late 702 amd early 80s, including changing adjuncts as some went out of production, changing from traditional barley varieties, using older hops, and perhaps a conscious decision to make it less bitter to appeal to a wider market.

https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com...0-08:00&max-results=20&start=39&by-date=false
And going back to the OP - high-gravity brewing is fairly common in the commercial world, but the kind of 2x dilution used for stuff like Carling is rather looked down, the odd litre here or there is rather different. But yes, things do end up tasting different when brewed up at 8% or so and then diluted down to 4%.

I'm not too sure tbh. I was a regular Boddies drinker until I moved down to London in October 1987 and it was still an excellent pint at that point in time. It had changed, but it was changing through the 70s and into the 80s, it didn't really stand still.

 

[An Ankoù]

Be very careful what you say about Boddingtons.

Whatever it is like now, it was once the finest brew ever made. And nobody has ever been able to reproduce it. Brewed by wizards, I believe. Wizards who disappeared into the night, when Whitbread bought the brewery.

Now there's a challenge!

 

[Galena]

Now there's a challenge!

But how would you know if you do reproduce it?