Topping up at bottling?

Northern Brewer General
1

Well, I screwed up, sort of. I built up a 1 liter starter from some dregs from a few Ommegang Witte bottles and thought I’d make a small batch of a simple and easy Saison with stuff I had on hand using my old Mr. Beer fermenter. Thinking it would easily hold 2.5 gallons, I made the recipe for that size. I should have looked a little closer at the barrel before doing this because it has been a few years since I’ve used it for beer. Lately, I’ve used it for small batches of hard apple cider with good results.

I started off with a little over 3 gallons for the boil and figured I could top up with some distilled water if I boiled off too much. I ended up with about 2 gallons and it just about filled up the barrel. I calculated the OG to be about 1.055-1.060 (for 2.75 & 2.5 gallons, respectively) and ended up with 1.070!

Bottling from the barrel is a pain and you have to prime each bottle individually so I was planning on siphoning to a bottling bucket and batch prime anyway. My question is, would it be a bad idea to boil a quart or quart-and-a-half of water with the priming sugar to dilute the final product? I’ve never diluted at bottling and I’m worried it might make it too watery or have some other ill effect. It tasted great going into the fermenter, but I wasn’t planning on something so big.

In case it matters to anyone, here is the recipe:

(Supposed to be 2.5-2.75 gallons)
OG 1.055 (for 2.75 gallons - ended up with 1.070 in about 2.15 gallons)
Est FG 1.010
IBU 27; IBU:GU 0.50

2.5 lbs Pilsen Light DME (71%)
0.5 lbs Golden Light DME (14%)
0.5 lbs White Sugar (14%)

0.5 oz Willamette @ 60 mins
0.25 oz each Willamette & Cascade @ 15 mins
0.25 oz each Willamette & Cascade @ 5 mins

1 tsp each dried sweet orange peel & cracked coriander @ 10 mins
0.25 tsp whole peppercorn @ 10 mins
5 grams (3 tea bags) 100% Hibiscus tea @ 2 minutes

Dregs built up from Ommegang house yeast in a 1 liter starter decanted to about a pint.

BTW-it took off like a rocket and spilled out from the lid. Pitched at about 75F per research. It was recommended by the Ommegang brewer (forget his name now) to ferment over 75.

Thanks for any insight!

2

I can’t imagine topping up at bottling would be a good idea though I’ve never done it. To me it seems like it would be the equivalent of salting your food after its cooked as opposed to using salt when cooking the food. I would be too afraid it would taste watered down.

3

Thanks. That was my main concern. I’ve never heard of anyone doing that and figured there was probably a reason why. :cheers:

4

Just to throw it out there- I understand that the big boys do this frequently. ie. make a concentrated batch and dilute it down at packaging time. Not saying that you want to emulate BMC, but it can be done if you want to.

5

Diluting at bottling is an accepted practice; in fact, many commercial breweries “brew big” and dilute at bottling to get the most volume out of their fermentors. I do it all the time; some times I do it on purpose by scaling up a recipe’s grain bill to brew a 6.5 gallon batch and then use the same amount of water as I would use for a 5.5 gallon batch, and some times I just just blow past my efficiency estimate. Either way, fear not, diluting at bottling does NOT result in thin, watery beer. Thin, watery beer is caused by improperly mashing at too low a temperature, over-attenuation or an improper yeast strain selection or the overuse of adjuncts. Here is the excellent resource that led me to diluting at bottling:

6

Thank you all for the replies. Excellent article Ken. Thanks for sharing. It provides just the info I need. Looks like I’ll try to calculate how much water to use with the priming sugar to reach my original target gravity on the back end. I brewed this to be a nice easy drinker about 5.5%, not 7+%.