noreaster40s

Recipes 

I just finished brewing up Northern Brewers all grain Three Hearted Ale. I pretty much hit all the temps I needed to and all went well. I use a wort chiller to cool the wort and there seemed to be alot of cold break when it reached temp for transferring. I didn't take out the chiller so as not to disturb the break and siphoned off the wort. I ended up just over a gallon short of 5 gallons so I added water to make up the difference. What was supposed to be an original gravity of 1064 ended up being 1043. I'm assuming it's because I added so much water.

So what do others here do to keep from putting the cold break into the fermenter? Make it a bigger boil so you end up with 5 gallons in the fermenter even when leaving behind all you do with the cold break in it?

Also, does a lower gravity just mean a lower alcohol beer or will the body be different too? Thanks.

TipsyDragon

Recipes 

next time make more wort. also you may want to think about whirl-pooling your wort. take your big spoon and swirl the cooled wort around as fast as possible. see how deep you can get the whirl-pool to go. then cover the pot and let sit for 10 minutes or so. this will collect most of the break material in the middle of the pot. then you siphon from the very edge of the pot.

noreaster40s

Recipes 

I'm not sure if whirlpooling will make much of a difference. It looked like the cold break was already pretty well coagulated together and I siphoned as far away as I could. Just that as the wort gets lower the cold break spreads out. I'll just have to go with making a bigger wort, I guess.

DFoster

Recipes 

I had a lower OG on my last batch but it was a water error...my calculator had me add way too much sparge water.

ρ®ïMσ

Recipes 

http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter9-1.html

I'm not a super experienced brewer, but I read this before I got into it. Says that a little bit of cold break is okay b/c it provides yeast w/ needed nutrients. Don't know if thats of and help to you.