Can This Brew Be Saved?

[Brizbrew]

I can't believe what I did just now. I spent 3 hours preparing, boiling and generally doing everything correctly on this brew.
I made a wort consisting of 4kg of light liquid malt, 500grams of crystal and am using a white labs san fransisco yeast wlp810.
I boiled around 5 litres with the liquid malt, did my hallertua hop additions on time and got to the stage where I was ready to cool my boiling wort so I placed it into a ice bath and changed the water swirled it etc until it came down to 30c, I calculated that if I poured this into my fermenter and added 18L of cold tap water it should come down to pitching temp, this is where I messed up.
I decided to use the hose pipe to top up the fermenter, I have a hose attachment that gets the water to the point where it will take your skin off if you spray it on you, ideal for topping up the fermenter as it gets loads of air in there ready for pitching, the problem was I added water until the foamy stuff came to the very top and was about to overflow so I stopped and looked at the quantity of water 20L, now as I had a 1L starter to pitch I figured 2 more Litres would do it nicely so I poured them in slowly and went upstairs to get my starter, when I got back the foam had started settling and to my horror it made the wort up to 26L plus I still had a litre starter to pitch.

I am now stuck with a wort of 27.5 litres (it settled even more) with an OG of 1030, I was aiming for 1050.
Can it be saved?
What if I boil up a small amount of water with 1.5-2KG of dried malt, will this help?

Any other suggestions?

I am gutted, 4 hours work was put into this brew and I am really gutted.

 

[JasonY]

1.5kg in 1L (if you can disolve it in that little water) should give you 28.5L of 1.050 wort. Your hop bitterness will probably be low as it sounds like you boiled them in a very high gravity wort (this reduces the bitterness extraction), depends on how much hops you added or if you have used any other hopped liquid malt as to what bitterness you will end up with.

Could be best to aim for a 1.045 beer if it is not bittered enough.

Have a read of http://www.howtobrew.com there is a lot of useful stuff in there and it will make your next brew day mush easier. (everyone has to stuff them up, thats what makes you learn for next time)

Hope it all turns out.

 

[Vlad the Pale Aler]

If you are using a 30l fermenter you will be very close to the maximum capacity including a bit of head space.
Mix up your dme with as little water as needed to make a syrup, so as not to add too much volume to the fermenter, and gently stir it into the wort. If the yeast is not showing signs of activity yet it should be safe to stir vigourously to get a bit of air into the wort.
With the increased volume you may like to add more hops to your syrup to help the hop flavour in the finish or boil up a hop tea.
Ditch the airlock on the fermenter and make a blow off tube to cope with the loss of headspace.

All is not lost.

 

[Brizbrew]

Thanks for hitting me back.

I am starting to feel a bit better, it really messed me up when I thought the brew was destined for the 3% mark as I like beers with a bit of a kick.

Anyway I just checked it and there is not a lot of activity yet in the airlock but the foamy stuff on top is slowly creeping up towards the airlock, maybe I will have to put a blowoff on before it gets too high.

The Hallertua hops (pellets) we're added as follows.

90g 60 minutes
15g 30 minutes
15g 5 minutes

I basically punched the information into the calculator at beertools and it give this the thumbs up so I rolled with it.

I have just checked the cupboard and I only have 500g of dried extract at the moment and will not be able to buy anymore until tuesday, I am going to make up the 500g in as little water as possible and add it this afternoon, maybe tuesday I will add more.

Just to confirm, could somebody with a better knowlege than I give me a second opinion on the OG of this beer.

4kg liquid malt
500g crystal, steeped for 30 minutes.
26.5 litres of water
1 litre starter which was around 1040 before it fermented out.

my hydrometer gives wildly different readings, from the top of the fermenter it gives me 1015 and from the tap at the bottom it gives 1030. When I used the calculator at beertools it gives 1045 and another calculator gives 1050.

 

[JasonY]

Well ignoring anything but the 4kg of LME (assumed coopers HWE = 317) in 27.5L of water gives 1.046. If your sample you measured was 60degC then all is well

Have you checked your hydrometer in plain water to make sure you get a reading close to zero?

 

[Brizbrew]

Well ignoring anything but the 4kg of LME (assumed coopers HWE = 317) in 27.5L of water gives 1.046. If your sample you measured was 60degC then all is well

Have you checked your hydrometer in plain water to make sure you get a reading close to zero?

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My hydrometer seems to work fine, it is brand new and has been tested, I think the difference in the top and bottom of the fermenter is just the heavy stuff falling to the bottom hence the higher reading.
Anyhow, I mixed up the remaining 500grams of dried malt that I had in 700ml of water and poured it into the fermenter, it is bubbling away now so I will have to put this one down to experience.

 

[Brizbrew]

I just took a reading with my hydrometer and the brew is now down to 1012 so it will probably turn out alright after all.
I give the bottom a gentle rousing with my sterile plastic spoon while I had the lid off just to make sure all the fermentables are done but at 1012 I guess they are.

As an aside because I did not know the OG for certain but JasonY estimated it at 1046 (thank you) before I added the 500ml of DME what could be the potential ABV of the wort?