My 20L no chill cube is a bit small to produce my 25 L brews (24 on bottling) I note that the 20L actually holds up to 22. If I'm going to do all the work for an AG brew I would prefer to get my full 24 L that I always got in my extract / partial / kits n bits brews.
OK I should get out the wallet and buy a 25L cube but haven't been able to get any from Bunnings and it seems a waste of a good 20L cube so I've been doing overgravity brews for my last couple and topping up in the fermenter with a couple of litres of good old water or half a bag of ice to get to pitching temp quicker. Also during the brew about half a litre would go in with a hop tea late addition and another half litre at Polyclar time.
Without doing extremely picky calculations I seem to be 'hitting the style' by nudging the ingredients - for example where I would use 4.5 kg grain I've upped it to 5, used a 30g hop addition instead of 25 and so on.
It's not really severe overgravity brewing like the commercials do but I'm interested to know if any other AHB members do this? I seem to be getting nice malty hoppy beers and no 'watered down' taste although I'm wondering if there's any way OG brewing alters hop flavour or aromas etc in the 'watered down' brew? (edit: as opposed to hitting the same gravity using the same ingredients in a 'normal' brewing process)
I also note that Fresh Wort kits seem to be brewed this way as they recommend adding some water.
OK I should get out the wallet and buy a 25L cube but haven't been able to get any from Bunnings and it seems a waste of a good 20L cube so I've been doing overgravity brews for my last couple and topping up in the fermenter with a couple of litres of good old water or half a bag of ice to get to pitching temp quicker. Also during the brew about half a litre would go in with a hop tea late addition and another half litre at Polyclar time.
Without doing extremely picky calculations I seem to be 'hitting the style' by nudging the ingredients - for example where I would use 4.5 kg grain I've upped it to 5, used a 30g hop addition instead of 25 and so on.
It's not really severe overgravity brewing like the commercials do but I'm interested to know if any other AHB members do this? I seem to be getting nice malty hoppy beers and no 'watered down' taste although I'm wondering if there's any way OG brewing alters hop flavour or aromas etc in the 'watered down' brew? (edit: as opposed to hitting the same gravity using the same ingredients in a 'normal' brewing process)
I also note that Fresh Wort kits seem to be brewed this way as they recommend adding some water.