Brew Day – Page 3 – Brewing Way

Water is an essential ingredient of any homebrew, but adding too much of it can cause problems. Fortunately, there are no problems in homebrewing that can't be fixed. On my very first homebrew day, I accidentally put 0.26 gallons (1 liter) of water over what the recipe suggested. I added this water straight into a fermenter to top it because I was brewing with an extract, but a couple of batches later I made the same mistake brewing all-grain. If you add too much water to your homebrew the ABV, taste, and texture will be affected. However, you can fix this mistake by adding corn sugar (dextrose), more malts (ideally in extract), and more hops. In my case, this happened out of poor concentration because it's easy to get mentally drained when you try to make everything perfect for the first time, but then you brew at the end of the day after the job. I was trembling for the next couple of weeks until the bottles were ready. When I cracked a bottle, it was a fantastic beer and I realized it was all in my head. How much water over the limit is a problem? Although in my case the beer ended great I did research to see what would happen if I added even more water. In short, I found out that if you add more than 0.5 gallons it may noticeably affect your homebrew, but adding more than a gallon would make a serious difference. We are talking about a real change in ABV, taste, and structure per 1 gallon of unnecessary extra water. Less than 0.30 gallons of extra water is neglectable in my opinion, especially when you are a beginner homebrewer. What will change in beer when too much water is added? ABV - Alcohol per volume will be affected by extra water which means that your beer will be weaker when served. The ABV doesn't only mean the strength of the beer in terms of how soon will it get you drunk but also has an effect on the taste of the beer. For instance, for the beer to be mildly bitter with the addition of hops, you need a good ratio of ABV because alcohol has the ability to push certain flavors and aromas or mask them. Taste - More water means more watery beer that is less enjoyable in terms of flavors, just like if you add too much ice to your favorite soda and let it melt, it becomes less aromatic. Texture/mouthfeel - Water changes the texture because the liquid density can be felt in the mouth. This will also affect how the head will be formed and how much foam and bubbles will be created when carbonized. What can you do to fix this problem? If you added less than 0.5 gallons you can either ignore it and still end up with a great beer or if you are a perfectionist you can either boil your wort for longer until you get rid of some extra water (prolonged boiling will sometimes make your beer even better). Boiling for extra time won't hurt the wort unless you added hops already, in that case boiling it for longer may exaggerate hop flavors, but yet again if you are a beginner this probably won't be a problem this time. In case you need other methods, let's see what you can do to save ABV and taste, and naturally, the texture and mouthfeel will follow along. How to adjust the ABV ABV will be affected by how much water you add, but you should either enjoy a slightly weaker beer (which in small instances isn't something you'll notice) or you can fix it by adding more fermentable sugar. If you wonder how to increase the alcohol content in your homebrew you should know it can be both easy and demanding depending on what you want to achieve, but it can always be done. An extra gallon of water may drop the ABV by 2%, so this can easily be noted, so half a pound of sugar per gallon of extra water should do the job to bring things back to balance. Now, if you have extra malts at the side you can add them but it means they'll need to mash them at the right temperature (66-70) for the sugars to get released before you can continue (just calculate how much you need it based on the original recipe and difference in extra water you added). If you are way past this step or are brewing with extracts, and find this too complex, then you can simply add sugars straight into the wort before pitching yeast or you can use malt extract and simply add it to the wort. If you have the malt extract meant for 5 gallons of beer you can add 1/5 of the can per extra gallon of water. Corn sugar (dextrose) is common when brewing with extracts and for priming, so it won't hurt if you add corn sugar to the wort whether you brew with grains or not. It works great with the yeast and the yeast won't have problems converting it into alcohol. You can also use any other fermentable sugar including honey, but corn sugar will change the taste the least. Also bear in mind, that half a pound per gallon works with corn sugar, but not all sugars are the same in terms of fermentability, so if you are going to use something else you'll need to adjust the ratio and probably add more of it. How to adjust the flavors More water also means more washed off-flavors, but yet again small amount will not make it noticeable, especially if you are brewing it for the first time and can't tell the difference. Still, too much water is too much water, and to fix this you should ideally just add more malts and hops and simply end up with the identical recipe in a larger amount. However, if it's not possible you can only add more hops to add more bitterness and flavor and mask the imperfections this way, yet when you add more hops but keep the abv lower than usual, you may create an unbalanced flavor. For this reason, It would be ideal if you could either add malt extract or mash more malts and then add more hops to have a safe outcome. If this is not possible, you can still experiment with hops, but check what hops you have and how much ABV is in your beer. There are many articles that explain the ratio between ABV and IBU (international bittering unit). When adding more hops you can dry hop this time instead of adding hops during initial brewing, so you can balance the flavors in a secondary fermenter. This is a phenomenal option because you can even taste some unfinished beer and see how many hops it needs before putting it into secondary. If you are not a masterful taster which is understandable (especially for beginners) simply follow the ratio mentioned in a recipe and add extra hops per extra gallon of water and you should be fine. You should do research to see what method will bring you what because if you need only additional bitterness you may not need to dry hop, but you can instead use a different method that will extract bitterness out of hops. In this instance, you can boil hops at 100 C for 30-60 minutes in a small amount of water and add them to the secondary fermenter with the rest of the beer. Finally, this can be a good opportunity to tweak the recipe, so you can add something unordinary that you think may fit in. For instance, add maple syrup, orange peels, spices, or some weird herb you have in a garden, as long as it makes sense, it can work, it's on you to adjust the stuff and experiment. Sometimes the best recipes are born out of mistake or out of someone's willingness to make things different or simply weird. Brew a second batch and mix them together You can make another heavier batch and mix it with the “ruined one”! If you have added too much water into your batch and there is no way to save it, you can keep it in a cool place and preserve it until you make another batch! This time, make a heavier-than-usual batch by adding more hops and malts to match the lack of flavor and ABV of the previous batch. Once it’s done, you can mix both batches and make a perfect beer because one overdone batch + underdone batch = a perfect batch! It may not only save your first batch, but it may result in a new recipe you will be proud of. You do not have to make an identical beer in the second batch, but it may be a completely different beer that will simply complement the first batch with higher flavors and ABV. Some good combinations are imperial stouts with Irish stouts, oatmeal or chocolate stouts with blueberry ales, Belgian pale ales with American pale ales, and some saury beers with some hoppy beers. These are just some out-of-head combos, but feel free to experiment and you may be surprised with the result!