Increased boil time to reach desired OG

I am on my 7th brew (AG) I seem to have a reoccurring problem with having to boil much longer to get my OG than recipes are calling for which is throwing off my hop additions. The last few brews I've done , I've been over my recipe boil time by almost an hour. I take hydrometer readings every 15 min till desired OG ( at 60 f) I am using a water calculator ( http://www.brew365.com/mash_sparge_water_calculator.php) I am trying to figure out whether or not its an efficiency issue or just wrong advice from the calculator. The wort hitting my carboys hae been close to volume +/- .5 gal so I'm doubting the efficiency issue.. any thoughts would help... Time to go take a reading and hope she's done.....

Are you hitting your preboil gravity each time? Are you cooling the wort each time you take a reading while boiling?

You didnt mention preboil gravity. If your gravity is low pre boil but volume is correct, it is an efficiency issue. If the gravity is low but volume is high, it is either a volume issue or a combination of volume and efficiency.


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always chilling sample... Not taking pre boil gravity readings only because pre boil gravity not mentioned in recipe. I considered that but was not sure where I would go with that info.... Thats the input I am looking for to figure this issue out. I seem to end up ok but this brew I did this evening came in a few .006 too low and I ended up with more wort to ferment. Filled carboy to max and ditched the trub. About 1/2 gal worth which is ok I guess.. More beer is a good thing was my thought process. I have always focused on hitting the OG reading regardless of boil time. Is this the right approach? if so, how should I approach hop additions? I think I get pretty good efficiency from my set up but I'm still trying to figure that out each time I brew... Thanks for the feed back.

If you're hitting your gravity and volume after an extra-long boil, you're using too much water in the first place. Wherever you calculate your water volumes probably assumes a higher boil-off rate than you're actually experiencing.

If you're boiling to hit your OG, but that often means boiling longer than you calculated, you're going to have more hop bitterness and potentially less hop aroma and flavor, depending on how you're deciding when to add your late additions (if your recipe says 60 minute boils and hops in the last 5 minutes, throwing them in after 55 minutes of a 90 minute boil means they're basically bittering hops, but if you throw them in 5 minutes before flameout, you're good).

I would personally just follow the recipe regardless of gravity. If you're way low, you could toss in a little extract to make up for it, or boil it down for a while before you start your hop additions (though that would potentially carmelize some of the wort, which may or may not be desirable to you), but otherwise I say just roll with the OG you get.