A few liquor questions

[Kegman]

Hi all,

Did my first AG brew 2 days ago (details and pics here viewtopic.php?f=24&t=36001), all looking good in the fermenting hood right now but a couple of things came up which I wasn't sure about, I'd appreciate your advice.

- First off the alk' test with the Salifert kit went pink at 0.26, for the 26.1l of liquor I needed this equated to 22.707ml of CRS, 4.76g of DLS with the grain and 13.51g at the start of the boil. This is in the Bury St Edmunds area BTW in case it helps anyone. I hope I got my figures right, anyone?!

- The second lot of DLS, do you put it in when it's boiling or when you start the boil?

I started with 26.1l (in total) and ended up with just over 15, maybe 16l, the recipe was for 19l so it's quite short. If you look at the pics in the link above you'll see that most of it vanished during the boil, probably not too surprising for a 90 minute vigorous boil.

- For the first 10-15 minutes the boiler had no lid but after seeing what had already gone I rested the lid on top of the boiler with a small gap to let the steam out. Was there anything else I could/should have done?

When cooled the original gravity was 1040, the recipe suggested 1037. I went on with the fermenting stage as I really didn't know what to do about it.

- Was the gravity low due to a reduction in water?

- Could I have added more water at this stage? If so, it would have been straight from the tap with no campden tablet, CRS or DLS. Is this a good idea?

Many thanks,

Kegman.

[lupulin]

I'm not sure about the CRS, I have not used it, but you can add water back to get closer to your gravity/volume if you want. After the mash and the boil there is not much harm in adding untreated water. Generally I don't worry about it unless my gravity is way off. I've made batches worse by "correcting" them so I figure just leave it and plan for next time.