Adding water during brew - did I do wrong????

[Calder]

I partial-mash/partial-boil. For a long time, my late addition of extract seemed to roughly offset the boil-off, and bring the level back to that at the start of the boil.

I'm now mashing more grains, and making lower gravity beers (I can drink more 5% beers than 7 or 8%), so adding very little extract at the end of the boil.

Today I added boiling water (from a kettle) to the boiling wort at 30 minutes and again at 15 before I added the finishing hops. Thought the added volume would help with the large amount of hops in the boil.

Any potential problems with this practice.

 

[SimonSaysBrew]

I presume you are "topping up" to replace lost volume due to boil off? Shouldn't hurt anything as long as you can still hit your target gravity. The extra volume will help with hop utilization a small amount.

 

[jahdub]

I've done this on my last 2 extract batches of a strong DIPA. It tastes much better than the 2 batches of the same recipe I made prior to topping off. Hop utilization is much better with a larger boil volume. I have a larger kettle now, so I wont be doing this anymore, but I kept my 5 gallon kettle filled nearly to the brim throughout the boil via 2 additions of boiling water.