Made too small a batch

Mashing
1

OK this is all my fault and really stupid, but through a series of interruptions, broken glass in my sparge water and fatigue, I ended up with a 3 gallon batch of Patersbier that should have been 5.

I didn’t realize the missing 2 gallons until after the boil. We added the yeast (Wyeast) and it is fermenting now for a about 2 days.

Needless to say the OG was way high.

Any suggestions or should we just go through the rest of the process and see what we have?

I’m engraving a 5 gallon mark on my 10 gallon kettle so this will NEVER happen again!

Uff da!

2

You can let it ride or make another beer that has a lower than normal OG. Then blend them together to get a reasonable OG.

3

Hmmm, Imperial Patersbier.

Another option would be to let it ferment out, boil and cool some water and add it to the finished beer. The macro brewers do this, I assume to maximize their fermenters.

4

Thanks for the advice. It looks like fermentation has slowed way down. I’ll do another OG check this weekend (1 week after brewing) and possibly add water then.

5

Measured the gravity and made some adjustments to the batch size calculation in iBrewmaster.

Based on a 3 (instead of 5) gallon batch, our numbers are VERY close to being correct.

I think we’ll “let it ride” and live with the results.

Could be great, could be swill.

Thanks again to ya’ll for the helpful ideas.

6

What is your actual OG?

Just curious what the gravity is on an imperial partersbier.

7

The OG of our “Imperial” Patersbier looks to be right around 1.062 which will put the ABV at 6.7% or so. We’ll rack this weekend and bottle around the end of the month. I’ll post some final results then.

8

Could be an interesting experiment. I’m worried it will really through off the balance of the beer with the gravity so much higher but the IBUs being the same. It might not be a big deal.

9

[quote=“Glug Master”]Hmmm, Imperial Patersbier.

Another option would be to let it ferment out, boil and cool some water and add it to the finished beer. The macro brewers do this, I assume to maximize their fermenters.[/quote]
Only partly to maximize their fermentors. My understanding is that for some reason a richer malt flavor develops if the fermentation happens at a higher gravity, but that may also just be marketing spin that sounds better than “it costs us less money to do it this way”.