I've got a 5-gallon (wort) batch of barleywine that I just transferred to secondary, and I've now got about 4.5 gal of liquid. After secondary, I'm expecting to have about 4.2 gallons (added premiere cuvee yeast).
Can I compensate for the loss of volume by adding an appropriate mix of vodka and water? That is, if the beer's supposed to end up with around 11.5% ABV, can I dilute vodka with distilled water until I get around a 12% solution, and then add an appropriate volume of that mix to my bottling bucket, so that my final bottling batch fills 5 gallons total?
I'm guessing that no one would be able to taste the difference, and I'd end up with another four or 5 bottles than I would otherwise. After all, any good barleywine should have some kind of alcohol taste in its profile, I think!
Anyway, this was a random thought I had today when I was staring at my carboy, which has about half-an-inch of solids precipitated at the bottom. I hate it when I can't fill up at least 48 12-oz bottles! I thought about diluting the final bottling batch with water, but then I realized that you can add vodka to beers without tasting the difference.
I'm sure this has been attempted before...but if not, I'll gladly try it out and post the results!
Can I compensate for the loss of volume by adding an appropriate mix of vodka and water? That is, if the beer's supposed to end up with around 11.5% ABV, can I dilute vodka with distilled water until I get around a 12% solution, and then add an appropriate volume of that mix to my bottling bucket, so that my final bottling batch fills 5 gallons total?
I'm guessing that no one would be able to taste the difference, and I'd end up with another four or 5 bottles than I would otherwise. After all, any good barleywine should have some kind of alcohol taste in its profile, I think!
Anyway, this was a random thought I had today when I was staring at my carboy, which has about half-an-inch of solids precipitated at the bottom. I hate it when I can't fill up at least 48 12-oz bottles! I thought about diluting the final bottling batch with water, but then I realized that you can add vodka to beers without tasting the difference.
I'm sure this has been attempted before...but if not, I'll gladly try it out and post the results!