Dilute Stovetop Brew?

[Beer_Pirate]

Has anyone here had success/failures with brewing a concentrated brew on the stovetop, then diluting it with water to full volume? I've done the math already and calculated my grains, hops, etc, but I was wondering if there's any reason this wouldn't be akin to brewing with extract and watering down. The beer is an ordinary bitter, so it's already pretty low gravity.

My plan is to collect 2.75 gallons of 1.063 OG wort, boil it down to about 2 gallons with 14 grams of Magnum, then dilute this with 2.5 gallons of water to a total volume of 4.5 gallons (Leaving a bit of headspace for the S-04 to do its thing). By my math I'll end up with something about 3.4% abv and in the high 20s/low 30s for IBU.

 

[jeffpn]

Wort is wort, I suppose, no matter how you get there. The only obstacle I see is efficiency. What is your plan to get 2.75 gallons of 1.063 wort? That’s a small volume and a high gravity to work with. But if you can do that, it’s just like a partial boil extract, like you said.

 

[Beer_Pirate]

I've dialed back my efficiency to 60%, which is honestly just a random guess, and I'll be mashing at 1.81 qt/lb of grain (2.5 gallons and 5.5 lbs of grain). It's thicker than I normally go but I'm going to sparge it with another 0.75 gallons or whatever will get me to 2.75 gallons after the mash to help with efficiency.

 

[jeffpn]

Worth a try. I mash at 1.3 qt/lb, which is what the Mash & Boil manual says to do. I wonder if more sparge water would be better than a thinner mash.

 

[Beer_Pirate]

I usually do full volume (minus about 0.5 gallon) BIAB and average about 75% efficiency. Any reason mash thickness would affect the end product aside from efficiency (and water chemistry, I adjust for that as well).

 

[jeffpn]

I think efficiency will be your biggest hurdle. It might take some experimentation to find out what will yield the best results.

 

[Mark D Pirate]

Before I got my urn every brewday was done this way , efficiency wasn't great but biggest problem was hop utilisation for hoppier styles due to gravity .
I was mashing 4-5 kg of grain in 12 l of water and thought using a 5 kg bag of ice in FV was a good hack

 

[Nosybear]

Has anyone here had success/failures with brewing a concentrated brew on the stovetop, then diluting it with water to full volume? I've done the math already and calculated my grains, hops, etc, but I was wondering if there's any reason this wouldn't be akin to brewing with extract and watering down. The beer is an ordinary bitter, so it's already pretty low gravity.

My plan is to collect 2.75 gallons of 1.063 OG wort, boil it down to about 2 gallons with 14 grams of Magnum, then dilute this with 2.5 gallons of water to a total volume of 4.5 gallons (Leaving a bit of headspace for the S-04 to do its thing). By my math I'll end up with something about 3.4% abv and in the high 20s/low 30s for IBU.

I've won medals using that method. It's not optimum for very pale beers but it works well for about everything else as long as you don't mind a little darkening and you adjust your hops.