Reducing Water Content

[dhal4]

Hi guys. This is my first post since joining. I've put down two kit and extract brews in the last couple of months - a pale ale and a wheat beer. Just wondering about what effect reducing the volume would have (other than increasing the alcohol content !) on the overall flavour etc of the brew ?

The thought occurred to me after reading through a few recipes from american sources etc that make the total volume to 19L (5 gallons) instead of 23L.

cheers

Dan

 

[skurvy84]

hey dan,

i asked the same question yesterday on another forum here is the direct quote below

Put it this way; don't think about volume, focus on gravity.

One of the most important instruments you'll ever use in brewing is a hydrometer. If you want a balanced beer, stop adding water when the fermenter wort is showing a gravity of around 1.040 or more. That's a good starting gravity for the yeast - not too heavy for yeast that may be less than fresh in the kit and not too light to make the whole batch barely enjoyable. It's perfectly ok to put a sanitised hydrometer in the fermenter wort whilst you add water to the kit.

Remember, that the kits are pre-hopped so you want to keep the malt/hop flavour profile in balance and a starting gravity of 1.040 or more will do the trick. If you add hops because you've added excess top up water, you'll find the malt side out of kilter, ie, thin on the palate. If you add kilos of malt extract (which is a much better idea compared to sugar or dextrose), you'll find your beer will be full of sweet malt flavour but low on hop freshness to balance out the sweetness. It's easy to make beer - the fun part is trying to make a balanced beer that your palate enjoys.

hope this helps

 

[Eyelusion]

I was just thinking about this the other day as well.
thx

 

[RdeVjun]

Hi Dan & welcome, sounds like you're hooked and I don't mean that in a bad way!

On the volume thing, yep other nations go for different volumes as a defacto batch standard. You can play around with batch volume if you want or sometimes limits are imposed by equipment, for instance I have an ancient Brigalow fermenter that only makes about a 19 litre batch.

But remember that wort strength is not just a simple linear thing and there are a few limits. If your wort is too strong the yeast may just fart and fall over, too weak and it'll be undrinkable 'animal food trough water' (i.e. 'swill', ex Monty Python and said with an outrageous french accent).

At this stage though, for you IMO there's no great harm in adjusting up or down a couple of litres of water with kit components unchanged, there would not be much noticeable impact. Beyond that though, I'd be adjusting the other ingredients to suit as well, although I'd stick with whole sachets of yeast. With extracts, there's a fair chance you're weighing stuff anyway, if so, just scale it. Having said that, I used to do extract recipes with ingredients by the tin- full, so its not always the case. 5kg digital kitchen scales that can resolve 1g would be perfect, not only now for this caper but also in the future where you could well be mucking around with kilos of extract, a few hundred grams of specialty grains and a dozen or two of hops.

Note, if you do have part- tins of goop leftover, transfer them carefully into a sanitised container and when using it in future you'll probably need to include it in a boil to clean it back up and nuke any stray bugs.