Home Brewing Tip

If you must dilute, take this route…
Sometimes, your final gravity reading may be higher than desired when your beer has finished fermenting. And isn’t it frustrating when you lose a couple quarts of home brew out of the top of your fermenter because fermentation was unusually active or the fermenter was too small? The temptation in either of these cases is to add some water to the fermenter to build up your volume, or dilute a heavy beer.

If you just can’t resist tampering with your new brew then try not to be hasty. Adding water to newly fermented beer should be done with caution for a couple of reasons. First, there is the potential to add contaminents along with the water. Second, tap water contains oxygen which will destroy your beer through oxidation in the bottle.

The way that you can avoid both problems is to add boiled and cooled water. Boiling kills wild yeast and bacteria as well as strips the water of disolved oxygen. Boil the water for 20 minutes and then let it cool to room temperature covered. When cool, add the water to the beer without splashing. This procedure will ensure quality beer that will meet your highest expectations.