Am making a extract American ipa. 5 gallon batch, I accidentally put 6 gallons of water in it. The brix is at 9 and sg is at 1.036. Is the batch going to be ok? Am afraid that I will not reach the ABV is supposed to be at 5.6 after the2nd ferment. I just brewed it 1-23-2020. Hops aremagnum 1oz, Columbus 2oz and African queen 2oz and thebegin of 2nd ferment add African queen 2oz dried. Thank u
To much water
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mkopec1
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Nothing much you can do really if you have it already fermenting. You could maybe add some Amalayse to the secondary to up the ABV a bit? But it will dry out some. But even if you dont do anything, it will be fine, you just wont hit your target ABV.
it’s already in first ferment, it’s been 2hours
Skip the secondary, it's not necessary.
You are probably going to end up at rougly 3.5% ABV as it stands. Adding 2lb of sugar pushes your gravity to 1.05 and you end up at rougly 5.2% ABV. This will change the taste to be on the drier side of things. It's up to you. I am personally fine with drier beers and I'd rather up the alcohol. Any more than this amount will likely be too dry though.
If you are going to add the sugar, you can add it to your fermenter. It's fine to open the fermenter during fermentation as it's producing plenty of co2 and the yeast is active enough they will devour all the oxygen. Boil some water, add sugar, stir. Let it cool to roughly the same temperature as your wort is and pour it in with as little aeration as possible.
You can also just add more malt extract, that costs a bit more though.
You are probably going to end up at rougly 3.5% ABV as it stands. Adding 2lb of sugar pushes your gravity to 1.05 and you end up at rougly 5.2% ABV. This will change the taste to be on the drier side of things. It's up to you. I am personally fine with drier beers and I'd rather up the alcohol. Any more than this amount will likely be too dry though.
If you are going to add the sugar, you can add it to your fermenter. It's fine to open the fermenter during fermentation as it's producing plenty of co2 and the yeast is active enough they will devour all the oxygen. Boil some water, add sugar, stir. Let it cool to roughly the same temperature as your wort is and pour it in with as little aeration as possible.
You can also just add more malt extract, that costs a bit more though.
if you have some dry malt extract (DME) you could add that to the fermenter. It will add fermentables without the drying effect of plain sugar. I think you would be OK to do that within the first 2 days but the sooner the better.
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You will end up with 20% more beer so cost isn't really a factor.
That's probably the best. I would dissolve it in a minimum amount of hot water (say a pint), pasteurize at 150F for 10' and add it as a pourable syrup. Don't wait too long, and don't splash it in there.
Adding 1.3 pounds of Light DME should get the batch back to around 1.044.
Is 1.044 the intended recipe's gravity? It's a bit low for an IPA, more like a Session IPA.
Keep good sanitation while doing so.
If you can get 1.5 pounds of light LME from a bulk container at your homebrew shop, it would work fine too. Just thin it down a little with some hot water, and pasteurize before adding.
You might not have gotten a representative OG sample - it happens a lot if adding top-off water because it's hard to get it mixed in thoroughly. If the target was 5.6% ABV for 5 gallons, and you actually had 6 gallons, you should end up with about 4.7% ABV. You could consider it a session IPA.
Session beers are 4.5% ABV or below, it's not a beer style. Can still be an American IPA, due to the hop variety, yeast, and malts used. Just a lower ABV version of one.
Every time you open the fermenter you let air in. Not good for beer.
Wait until 2 days after it's done fermenting before taking another reading, and add the dry hops. Do not use a secondary. Then 3-5 days later, package it.
HB_ATL73
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I would agree with those saying add DME. I wouldnt add plain sugar, but that's my taste.
I would now leave it alone for 14 days or longer. You can push things and try at 7 - 10 days but if it is not finished fermenting you are taking gravity readings that are unnecessary.
