Added too much water!

The Homebrew Forum

Help Support The Homebrew Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Joined
Apr 8, 2019
Messages
2,451
Reaction score
2,782
Location
Essex
Hi. I’ve got a standard 1 pouch IPA kit on at the moment and replaced the 1.5kg of required sugar with 1.2kg LME and just 200 grams sugar. I wanted to avoid sugar as much as possible and to get the quoted 5.5% to something under 5%. OG was 1.040 so I think that should turn out about right. I also replaced the kit yeast with Mangrove Jacks US west coast as I was concerned, possibly unnecessarily, that the kit one wouldn’t be good enough with the extra LME. I plan to dry hop with 100g Citra pellets a couple of days before bottling. The brew has been in FV at 20 degrees for 12 days now and is still chugging away. All my previous brews have stopped having reached FG at about 5-7 days. I’m not concerned about that. I’m ok to wait. The biggest concern i have is that after filling the bucket to the 23 litre mark at the beginning, I noticed the it was on a bit of a wonk and when levelled out I’d actually filled to about 24 litres. I didn’t think it would matter too much because of the extra LME I’d used but I took a SG reading this morning and had a little taste and, although I realise it’s still brewing, I tasted pretty thin. Is there anything I can do to try to rectify this at such a late stage?
 
I wouldn't worry; the markings on the FV probably aren't that accurate anyway. One litre in twenty-three will only dilute the beer by 4.3% so would reduce your ABV from 5.5 to 5.3%.
 
Last edited:
The original kit may itself produce 'thin' beer. When doing kits I rarely brew to 23 litres, more like 21 ish, and then adjust any additional adjuncts to give me the OG I require. In your case I wouldn't be concerned about this brew now, what's done is done.
 
Thank you. I was more concerned about diluting the flavour than the ABV. I’ve noticed people on here rarely brew 23l kits to 23l! Ok, let’s see how it turns out? At the very least, I’ve got myself an extra couple of pints out of it :)
 
Just a suggestion Mark be careful of how much it is costing to add extra LME and changing the yeast plus dry hop as you could possibly look at the dearer kits with generally 2 tins and already balanced out such as youngs IPA which seems to have a good name in the kit brewing fraternity. I know that cost does not always come into it as experimentation is what some people want but it is easy to runaway with cost on some very poor to average kits also read the kit reviews in the forum will give you some good ideas for future kit brews
 
Just a suggestion Mark be careful of how much it is costing to add extra LME and changing the yeast plus dry hop as you could possibly look at the dearer kits with generally 2 tins and already balanced out such as youngs IPA which seems to have a good name in the kit brewing fraternity. I know that cost does not always come into it as experimentation is what some people want but it is easy to runaway with cost on some very poor to average kits also read the kit reviews in the forum will give you some good ideas for future kit brews

Yes, I know what you mean and that is a very good point. I actually only ordered this one pouch IPA, which I thought seemed quite cheap at a tenner for 1.75kg, as I was already placing an online order and wanted to get better value from the postage cost. Funnily enough, the order I was placing was for the Young’s premium IPA kit!
 

Latest posts

Back
Top