Glossary
High-gravity brewing
Brewing a stronger beer than intended and diluting it with deaerated water at packaging, to get more finished beer out of the same plant.
Also called hgb, dilution brewing.
The full record
High-gravity brewing has its own catalogue entry with the detail this page summarises — causes, thresholds, related styles and evidence.
High-gravity brewing — Ferment a stronger wort than the finished beer requires, then dilute to sale strength with deaerated water after fermentation.
Standard practice in large-scale brewing because it increases effective capacity without new tanks. Its critics argue that dilution flattens flavour and body in ways that are not fully recovered; its defenders point out that the process is controlled and the finished beer meets specification.
Related
- Original gravity — The figure the technique manipulates.
More vocabulary
Arrested fermentation · Barrel ageing · Batch sparging · Biotransformation · Blending · Bottle conditioning · Bottom fermentation · Burtonisation · Cask conditioning · Centrifugation
See every term on the glossary index.
Last reviewed 2026-08-16.