Diluting and pitching your wort || Online all grain homebrewing course
Channel: Team Homebrew
Date: 09/01/2017

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You now have a strong wort in your fermenter. You can decide now how strong you want your beer. 

Topping up is simply adding cold clean water to reach a specific volume and gravity. It’s a trade off between flavor/ alcohol and volume of beer.

After boiling, I ended up with 3.4 gallons (13 L) in the fermenter at 1.058.

To get an original gravity reading of 1.044, I added a gallon (4 L) of topping up water.

After adding your topping up water, stir violently back and forth for a minute to further aerate the wort.

If you want stronger flavor and alcohol, don’t dilute your wort at all.

However, the higher end of the APA range is 1.060. So if your post boil gravity is above this, you may want to dilute.

Pitching
Your yeast should be rehydrated now and have a creamy head.

Pitch it into the wort and seal with sanitized plastic wrap.

Sterilize a pin with a flame and prick a small hole in the plastic wrap.

If your yeast doesn’t show any signs of responding to rehydration, you may want to pitch another packet.

Rehydrate again as per the normal instructions.

From here, brewing is the same as when you brew from a concentrated homebrew tin:
maintain a fermentation temperature to suit your yeast
monitor fermentation progress with your hydrometer
once you reach the final gravity (ie stops falling for two days) leave for another five to seven days for the yeast to clean any off flavors
bottle and, when ready, enjoy.

You now have a bag full of wet malted barley. Be warned that in a day or two it will get pretty rank.

I found the easiest way is to cast over the lawn. Maybe it helps it grow. Who knows.

Composting can work too, but it still gets smelly if not mixed in with dry matter.

Other options include:

getting some chickens
baking with it
making dog biscuits.
Now that you have your first all grain beer complete, let’s look at how to improve next time.