Watering down your beer ?

[duncans]

Might seem like an odd question, but if I wanted to water down a beer at the end of fermentation would you expect it to have a big negative impact on flavour.

Have a saison on that's coming out higher ABV than expected near 6.4%. Higher efficiency and attenuation means it is up from the planned 5.1%.

Would rather have more beer of planned strength than less with higher ABV tbh.

 

[Covrich]

you water down everything though all the flavours will get watered down so bare that in mind.. If you're going to add several liters it could be diminishing flavours of hops and in this case yeast mostly by you know 20% or more.. That is the thing with Saison yeast it tends to be very high attenuation. If you're batch priming you could make a larger solution but I would try not to go over the top .. perhaps strike a balance?

My opinion is if you wish to do it do it sparingly..

 

[wheazy_joe]

If your main concern is ABV and not wanting to get ******, perhaps you could retain all the good qualities by not diluting it, but bottle in 330ml instead of 500ml meaning you can drink smaller qualities??

 

[MyQul]

If your main concern is ABV and not wanting to get ******, perhaps you could retain all the good qualities by not diluting it, but bottle in 330ml instead of 500ml meaning you can drink smaller qualities??

Most of my bottles are 330ml - I just drink more of em :lol:

 

[Slid]

Might seem like an odd question, but if I wanted to water down a beer at the end of fermentation would you expect it to have a big negative impact on flavour.

Have a saison on that's coming out higher ABV than expected near 6.4%. Higher efficiency and attenuation means it is up from the planned 5.1%.

Would rather have more beer of planned strength than less with higher ABV tbh.

Saison is something of an acquired taste to me. The yeast does yield almost 1% ABV above most others and the taste of the yeast dominates everything else so totally that dilution might not lose you much.

If you are bottling in 500ml bottles or smaller, you might find that you do not want more than one or two at a time anyway.

 

[nickwhiteley]

I would have thought there is a big risk of introducing oxygen causing all that lovely beer to turn to vinegar.
I've never tried it though so would be interested in the results if you do it. I always live with the higher ABV.

 

[clibit]

You can water down your beer before bottling. A good idea is to take out a small amount, like 200ml, and add 10ml water to it, then taste it. Add another 10ml and taste it, and so on. Then dilute the beer in the same ratio that you liked best. If you use 200ml, multiply the amount you diluted by 5 to get the amount of water to add per litre, then multiply that by the number of litres you are bottling. So if you decide that adding 30ml to 200ml was ideal and you are bottling 21 litres (make sure you account for loss to sediment in the FV):

30 x 5 = 150ml per litre.

150 x 21 = 3150ml = 3.15 litres.

You may, of course, decide it was better without any dilution, but at least you'll know!

 

[simon12]

There is no problem with dilution the only thing I would worry about its a low body/sweetness style thats quite thin/watery anyway and it will make it more so, also you added hops for whatever batch size so there flavour will be less.