Brewer vs Nature

[RatsoRizzo]

So there I am chilling my wort in the kitchen sink, stirring away with the cold water flowing nicely out of the tap. It's been a smooth brew morning but I'm pushed for time. All under control though, I can chill for five more minutes, syphon over to fermenter, pitch the yeast and be on my way.

Suddenly a wasp starts buzzing around the kettle. WTF, it's mid October in Sweden, they should be dead. Now I'm a city boy, the closest I like to get to nature is Discovery channel so I cannot just ignore this beast and hope it goes away. I grab a book and commence hand to hand combat, resulting in a good clean shot and victory for the brewer.

Of course I have left the water running and my kettle has floated under the running water slightly. A quick look suggests a fair bit of water has diluted the wort. A refractometer reading confirms my 1.052 brown ale has been watered down to a 1.042 mild. I brewed a mild two weeks agao, I don't want another mild. A quick bit of Beersmithing to try and figure how much DME to add and then I boil up as little water as I can get away with add DME and boil for about 30 seconds. Time is getting tight now. Quickly chill the thick DME wort, add to fermenter and then rack the watery wort on top of it. Quick reading says back up to 1.050, pitch yeast and then run out of the apartment.

I was going to post this to ask whether I can do anything later on to adjust the hop bitterness upwards after diluting my wort but what the hell, instead it can serve as a cautionary tale; don't let nature mess with your brew.

Hope your weekend brew day goes smoother than mine, brothers and sisters.

 

[JimRausch]

Congrats on getting the little bugger.
I had composed a post saying that since you added enough DME to make the same OG, that your IBU/OG ratio is the same. But, then I realized that the increased volume would mean your IBUs were less. So, I'd be interested in seeing what other peoples thoughts are. Of course, when it's done fermenting, if it tastes less hoppy than you were hoping for you can always dry hop it.

 

[Simps]

If you can get hop extract, it might help.

 

[feinbera]

Dry-hopping won't do much for bitterness.

1.052 -> 1.042 sounds like you only added 20% volume, so, you should still be 80% as bitter as the original recipe, so, maybe don't sweat it?

Seems like a long-boil hop tea at bottling time should help? Haven't tried it myself, though.

 

[RatsoRizzo]

Yeah, I'm probably not going to sweat this one. It might be a bit on the sweet side as it was moderately hopped to begin with. I'm just glad the wasp didn't land in the wort when I whacked him with a cookbook.

I'll give it a taste when it's time for bottling and if it's completely off I'll look into boiling some hops with my priming sugar.

 

[Rev2010]

If time weren't an issue I'd have said to simply bring it back to a boil and boil off the excess, but since time was an issue I guess the only other option would have been to calculate a small amount of hops to add to the DME boil.


Rev.