It was absolutely heavy, but I had no data on yeast health or what specific steps were taken during the step-up process so I was very concerned about under-pitching, particularly at 1.085. Unfortunately no pH; When I took over fermentation management the pH meter available to me was broken so only got one (very questionable) reading from 2 tanks early on in the first fermentation both of those were around 3.5 so I cut back on my backset in the second-half fills (first fills had closer to 250gal per 750gal batch). I'm definitely flying blind on that and it's really something I want to get nailed down.
It wasn't topped off with more water, it was topped off with another 650 gal of wash. Basically:
Day 1) 650 gal wash into empty tank
10) Gravity reaches 1.006
11) Top off tank with 650 more gallons of 1.085
This was realistically just poor production scheduling, but I got pulled by the owners into non-production/Re-opening things so this timetable process won't happen again.
The purpose is to make.... well, I'm not entirely sure, tbh. The term rum has been floated around a lot but I think some of it will be a very light white rum and some will be re-distilled into a sort of vodka. Rum in name but not really in character.
Questions about pH are unfortunately unanswerable other than 2 questionable readings coming in around 3.5. The meter that I was provided early on in this whole process was largely broken and useless. I've got another one on order so, again, going forward this wont be an issue. Temperature is sitting at approx 80F. Colder than my pitch of 97, but it has now been almost 15 days since the second fill so this is to be expected.
The slurry was stepped up from an unknown number of homebrew Omega Voss packets. This was all done before my time so the process and timetable is/was unknown to me. For lack of these metrics as well as an unknown viability/cell count, I intentionally went heavy. I have to assume that the starters that the yeast were in consisted of the same brown sugar that were used for the wash although this is totally an assumption.