First Lager Assistance

[gethrog]

G'day all,
With a bit of assistance from the members of this forum I have brewed a couple of kick ass ales which were demolished at my sons 21st. (Strangely the oldies wouldn't try the "home brew" but the youngsters wouldn't drink anything else.)
Last night I started on my first lager. A bit less drama than the first 2 ... not even any fires, but I have ended up with only 16 litres in the fermenter. I haven't pitched yet and I'm wondering if I am running any risk adding a litre of 2 of distilled water before I start fermenting. The SG was 1030 before the boil and is now spot on 1050 but as I say it's only 16 litres and I'll probably lose another 1/2 to a litre in the trub. I am shooting for 1008 after 2 week primary at 10 deg and a 3 week secondary at 7 deg. My Beersmith says if my orig SG was 1045 I will end up with a 4.8% whereas I am currently likely to get 5.5%.

Any suggestions or is this idea heresy?

 

[Bribie G]

Shouldn't be any problem adding extra water. In my Kit n Kilo days I would regularly commence the brew by filling the fermenter up to the moulding 'line' on my 30 litre fermenters because that would give me heaps of headroom for the krausen I usually got from that feral Coopers Ale yeast
When the krausen subsided I would chuck in a couple of kettles of water that had boiled then cooled (sanitises the water and drives off dissolved oxygen) and that would bring it up to desired volume. Even today about two hours ago I late hopped a brew with a litre of 'hop tea' made from boiling water and 20g of flowers which I cooled down and just added to the beer.

Rather than spending $ on distilled water, just do the kettle trick, should be fine.

So long as you have a handle on the SG, which you obviously have, then can't see any probs.

 

[raven19]

Echoing Bribies recommendations.

Or just go water straight from the tap - we have all used tap water in K&K days with no issues - I would make sure you have a yeast started ready to go first though.

Or... I dont see an issue with 5.5% beer either, so you could just pitch yeast as is.

Its all up to you. Cheers.

 

[Bribie G]

sorry didn't see the bit about not fermenting yet.... go for the tap water for sure, if it's good enough for a kit brew it's good enough for anything else.

For my partial brews where there's usually a pot of something hot to go into the fermenter I also dump a bag of pure drinking quality ice from the bottlo into the fermenter and get instant pitching temperature.

 

[gethrog]

Thanks guys great stuff. What I am uncertain of now is just how much water I can add without dropping that SG down too much? Is it just trial and error with a few hydro readings??

 

[Fatgodzilla]

Thanks guys great stuff. What I am uncertain of now is just how much water I can add without dropping that SG down too much? Is it just trial and error with a few hydro readings??

What strength you aiming for anyway ? And what yeast you using ?

 

[gethrog]

Added a litre at a time and after 2 litres the reading was 1.044. Will leave it at that and shoot for 1.007 or 1.008 and get a high 4's beer.

 

[gethrog]

What strength you aiming for anyway ? And what yeast you using ?

I am aiming for a high 4's (4.8 ish) I am using SafLager West European Lager S23 and yeast nutrient. I have addee 2 litres so the SG at start before pitching is now 1.044

 

[gethrog]

What strength you aiming for anyway ? And what yeast you using ?

Hey my brother lives at Tuross Head. I was there last week. Nice spot.i

 

[mouapp12]

Thanks guys great stuff. What I am uncertain of now is just how much water I can add without dropping that SG down too much? Is it just trial and error with a few hydro readings??

just use beersmith, work out your efficiency and change the "Batch Size" till the other numbers look right eh?