Gravity question
- Thread starter dumsboa09
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I don't see why it'd have an effect on hot break, but perhaps others know of a reason. The bigger concern to me would be DMS, produced during the boil, staying in the liquid. However, I'd imagine boil-off percentage is mostly all that matters in that regard. If you don't taste cooked corn in your beers I wouldn't worry about it.
Whattawort
Well-Known Member
I do it with every boil. I tend to lose more than the average bear on my evaporation rates so anything I can do to keep it in the pot I do. No harm, no foul yet.
I do not boil with a lid and don't taste a corn flavor in them either but I was hoping that using a lid would save on boil off. I'm trying boil all this mess in an 8 gallon pot. So boil off is most likely my issue which means I should count on making smaller batches to fit in the pot until I get new pots, is this a good assumption?
Something like this will help with boil-overs: http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/fermcap-s-1-oz.html.
Well that's a pretty neat thing but I'd rather not add more junk into the beer ya know. I really appreciate your quick responses. At this point I need a bigger pot so I don't boil over. I'm 6 batches in on this home brew gig and its constantly changing. I do enjoy it tho. Maybe shouldn't have jumped right into all grain brewing huh
A larger pot is definitely good. My 10 gallon works well for my 6 gallon batches. As far as jumping in to all grain, I'd say that's the only fun way to do it. If I weren't formulating my own recipes and tweaking my brewing water, etc, I'd get bored pretty quickly. Plus, the mash smells great.
Whattawort
Well-Known Member
Fermcap isn't going to impart anything other than keeping the foam down. I use an 8gal pot and it's my only saving grace for not getting boil overs. I've also been known to start the boil with a smaller amount of wort and slowly add more as the boil goes on to replace what's been boiled off. About .25gal at 45min, another .25gal at 30 and more as needed until 10min before flameout. Have to time it in between the hop schedule and adjust accordingly, but it works. Just try not to burn yourself!
feinbera
Well-Known Member
I think your pre-boil gravity might be more of an issue here than any boil-overs; going from 1.040 to 1.070 is nearly doubling the sugar concentration -- which means boiling off almost half the water.
Unless you're intentionally doing something weird, you're not going to be boiling off more than 20% or so of your pre-boil water, so, you should be looking for pre-boil gravity that's under the post-boil target by 20% or less. A 1.040 pre-boil probably won't break 1.048 when all is said and done (you must've boiled off about 2 gallons to hit 1.061, which is a lot), and you'd want to start around 1.056 pre-boil to hit 1.070 post.
feinbera said:
I mashed 18 lbs of grain with 6 gallons at 152. Then sparged with just under 5 gallons at 170. Not sure how else to rinse more sugar out of a ten gallon cooler. I sparge super slow too so I don't get channeling.
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