First all grain - too much water, low OG

[padraic_]

Hi folks,

the title pretty much says it all. I made my first all grain today and confused things so I put 5L extra into the mix.

I boiled for an extra 30 mins to try and evaporate a bit and it partially worked but I finished up with an OG of 1030 where I was looking for 1040.

I have most of the wort fermenting now, but kept one litre in the fridge. I was thinkning of boiling it with some DME tomorrow and adding that to the fermentor.

Would that work. How would you do the maths?

For bonus points my wort now tastes over bitter - 60 mins hops were left in for 90. Is there anything to be done for removing the bitterness or should I just leave that and see how it goes?

[armedcor]

What is your overall volume? Beersmith has a gravity adjustment tool. Eg to bring 20 liters of 1.030 wort to 1.040 would take about 600g of dry malt according to beersmith. Should help with the bitterness as well.

[mick02]

I've never had to do this either but keep in mind that if you do boil and add some DME you will be naturally debittering the beer. I think there *may* be a calculator in beersmith for this but I'm not sure. Hopefully someone with some experience with a similar problem can chime in. Good luck with the mixing

[padraic_]

i haven't had a look at beersmith yet - to be honest I figured I could do with a couple of brews under my belt before it made sense.

Having a quick look at brewers friend and other websites - I can't see an equivalent.

Volume in the fermentor now is ~25 litres. Total will be 26.

[armedcor]

It'll take 710g of dry malt extract to raise 26 liters of 1.030  wort up to 1.040 according to beersmith

[Pheeel]

What type of beer were you making?

[Gallagherdee]

Sometimes I add some suger. It makes it stronger and dryer. I find it improves an ipa.

[padraic_]

Making an ipa. Basically a modified version of Dead Pony Club. I'm not expecting it to be wonderful but hoping that it's decent and that I learn something. [And I've already learned that you're supposed to subtract the sparge water from the boil volume when mashing!].

I have 500g of light spraymalt so I'm going to boil that and some priming sugar up now and add it once it cools down.

Thanks for the help folks.

[RedAndGreen]

Always find a handy rule of thumb for your mash liquor is 2.5 times the grain bill.
e.g 9kg total grain ~ 22.5 L liquor in the mash.

[beerfly]

The longer boil would not have increased the bitterness, the different gravity might (the extracted bitterness affected by the wort gravity) but a 0.010 difference should not be that noticeable.

[Qs]

If it's your first AG and it's not fermented I wouldn't be so sure its too bitter yet. I usually get a very harsh raw bitterness from the wort for my IPAs.