Watering down : Big/Small beer

I am thinking of brewing a batch of extract beer with the following specs

20 litres
OG 1.095
IBU 66
Colour 12.7 EBC
ABV 9.5

I will keep 10 litres as it is. the other 10 litres I was thinking I could dilute using a further 10 litres. would this result in my original specs being divided by two?
I will ferment each batch after dilution.
If it does what are the down sides to watering down by such a volume?

cheers

You certainly can scale down like that.

The question is "should" you scale down like that? Probably not. You'll be looking for different characteristics from a smaller beer, not just half the alcohol and IBU.

When you say 'characteristics' what do you mean?

Obviously it will be different from the original, but I'd expect that. Such things as thinner mouth feel, paler colour are fine.

superflyguy said:

When you say 'characteristics' what do you mean?

Obviously it will be different from the original, but I'd expect that. Such things as thinner mouth feel, paler colour are fine.

Click to expand...

It is a big beer so you might be able to get away with it.
I would either fruit or oak the smaller batch to get something to taste.

Possibilites are:
Thinner mouth
Watered Down taste
Absesnce of hops (utilization is poor in extract batches as is)
No Flavor
Light Color
Half the ABV%
Posibility of infection with top up water and low ABV%

Johnnyhitch1 said:

It is a big beer so you might be able to get away with it.
I would either fruit or oak the smaller batch to get something to taste.

Possibilites are:
Thinner mouth
Watered Down taste
Absesnce of hops (utilization is poor in extract batches as is)
No Flavor
Light Color
Half the ABV%
Posibility of infection with top up water and low ABV%

Click to expand...

Thinner mouth - fine with this as it's a smaller beer
Watered Down taste - Dry hops
Absence of hops - Dry Hops and I add 95% of extract post boil, so I'd think util. is pretty good.
No Flavour - Dry Hops and I'll be adding a top up of steeped grains for flavour
Light Colour - I'll be adding a top up of steeped grains for flavour
Half the ABV% - no problem
Possibility of infection with top up water and low ABV% - agreed, thorough boiling of additional water should mitigate this.

Hopefully it'll turn out OK. I'll post back results when I get round to brewing it! cheers

"When you say 'characteristics' what do you mean?"

Pretty much everything - mouth feel, dryness, maltiness, hop aroma etc. It will obviously still be beer, but cutting a great big beer in half won't necessarily produce a great small beer. It could be out of balance in any number of ways depending on the original style and recipe.

There is nothing wrong with experimenting, but if someone asked me to make a belgian table beer, I sure wouldn't start with a belgian triple and then water it down.

Dont confuse "dryhopping" with "flavor" hop additions or even flameout additions in the boil.

Will this be a full boil?
Doing a partial boil and then topping up to get to 5gals then splitting it and topping up one half to get to 5gal is going to leave you with little if any bitterness and absolutly NO aroma/flavor due to poor efficiency with extract brews. I would add 25% of your extract @ 60 and the rest @ flameout also.
95% @ flameout is to little sugars in the kettle during the key time for alpha isomerzation. Some say this is void, ive experienced otherwise...

Dry hopping will NOT give you much flavor nor mouthfeel.

Steeping grains will help but require you to heat the 5gals back up to ~150 plus youll get no conversion if you dont use base malt.
PLUS...you will always have to reboil because of the natraul lacto bacteria present on the grains.

Cheers

Thanks for all the input guys. I have mapped my process and can avoid any reheating and am fairly confident that I can achieve a decent 2nd beer.

Here's to experimentation!

Cheers
Adam