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From: sharp@dairy.DEC (Don Sharp, CAD software engineer)
Newsgroups: net.wines
Subject: Re: My first homebrew
Message-ID: <1132@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Date: Thu, 13-Feb-86 16:02:26 EST
Article-I.D.: decwrl.1132
Posted: Thu Feb 13 16:02:26 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 15-Feb-86 02:39:41 EST
Sender: daemon@decwrl.DEC.COM
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 41

Trevor J. Smedley, University of Waterloo
({decvax,allegra,ihnp4,clyde,utzoo}!watmum!tjsmedley) writes:

>Unfortunately no one told me to carefully figure out how many cups are in a
>gallon, and I somehow used less than half the required amount of water. Upon
>realising this (at bottling time) I added the extra water, and prayed. I
>figure that as long as the alcohol concentration didn't get high enough to
>kill the yeast, things should be ok. Anyone have any ideas as to whether
>this will work out or not? (I figure that there was about 2 gallons of
>liquid where there was supposed to be 5. These are Imperial gallons, so
>that's 2.5 American gallons instead of 6.25)

Take this with a grain of salt, since this is not from experience, but just
a guess. It seems to me you've got a great chance of exploding most if not
all your current bottles. My reasoning is this: the fermentation will stop
not when all the food (starch/sugar) is consumed by the yeast, but when the
alcohol concentration gets to the point of inhibiting further growth. It
depends on the yeast, but chances are what you've got in those bottles is
some live yeast, and some quantity of unconsumed yeast food, probably more
than the normal dosage.

If your yeast has a high tolerance for alcohol then all the sugar in the
brew would have been fermented out, and everything is OK.

If your yeast is especially sensitive to alcohol it might all be dead, in
which case your brew will end up flat, sweet, and light (i.e. low alcohol)

I think you could try opening a bottle early to see how it's doing. If the
cap flies off and beer froths all over you might consider popping them all
rather than lose many bottles to undesirable explosions.

Maybe some other expert on the net will set me stright on this.

Good luck,
Don Sharp.

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