I had a few mishaps with an IPA batch today. A couple of beersmith settings I had incorrect really threw me off. No big deal, I'm still tuning my all grain process.
I had the "Set Boil Volume Based on Equipment" checkbox unchecked, had a slightly too large value in the boil volume, and had for some reason not set "Lost to trub and chiller" value to .75 gallons like I intended (massive loss of wort to trub on previous all grain batch). After the mash, I suspected I had too much wort, but the pre-boil gravity reading was consistent with the beersmith brewsheet, so I pressed on. After the boil (including bittering and flavor hop additions at 60 minutes and 30 minutes), I removed the hop bags, started the batch on the immersion chiller and checked the OG, which was 1.061 instead of the 1.076 that it was supposed to be. I then checked Beersmith out and realized what I had done. Essentially, I had used way too much sparge water, making my post-boil wort have too much volume and not enough gravity. Since I did not have any DME or LME lying around, I instead made a decision to boil off the excess volume to get to the gravity I originally wanted. This took about an extra hour once I got the wort back to a boil, so I got a total of a two hour boil.
I'm now wondering what the effect will be. I assume my aromatics from the 30 minute hop additions will be lost to the extremely long boil. I considered adding some more aromatic hops when I was getting close to the correct volume and gravity, but thought that perhaps since this recipe uses dry hopping (.5 oz simcoe and 1.0 oz amarillo for 7 days each) that most of the aromatics will come from the dry hopping, so I didn't add any more aroma hops. I expect the beer won't have exactly the same character as it would have if this hadn't happened, but who's to say that's a bad thing? I don't believe the bittering levels will be affected, since the hops did stay in for the prescribed amount of time in the recipe, just not at the end of the boil, and since I removed the hop bags, all bitterness extraction from the bittering hops (and the IBU's that came from aroma hops) would not be affected by boiling longer. That said, I'm not a chemist or anything, so I'm not sure how boiling longer will affect the bitterness.
I had the "Set Boil Volume Based on Equipment" checkbox unchecked, had a slightly too large value in the boil volume, and had for some reason not set "Lost to trub and chiller" value to .75 gallons like I intended (massive loss of wort to trub on previous all grain batch). After the mash, I suspected I had too much wort, but the pre-boil gravity reading was consistent with the beersmith brewsheet, so I pressed on. After the boil (including bittering and flavor hop additions at 60 minutes and 30 minutes), I removed the hop bags, started the batch on the immersion chiller and checked the OG, which was 1.061 instead of the 1.076 that it was supposed to be. I then checked Beersmith out and realized what I had done. Essentially, I had used way too much sparge water, making my post-boil wort have too much volume and not enough gravity. Since I did not have any DME or LME lying around, I instead made a decision to boil off the excess volume to get to the gravity I originally wanted. This took about an extra hour once I got the wort back to a boil, so I got a total of a two hour boil.
I'm now wondering what the effect will be. I assume my aromatics from the 30 minute hop additions will be lost to the extremely long boil. I considered adding some more aromatic hops when I was getting close to the correct volume and gravity, but thought that perhaps since this recipe uses dry hopping (.5 oz simcoe and 1.0 oz amarillo for 7 days each) that most of the aromatics will come from the dry hopping, so I didn't add any more aroma hops. I expect the beer won't have exactly the same character as it would have if this hadn't happened, but who's to say that's a bad thing? I don't believe the bittering levels will be affected, since the hops did stay in for the prescribed amount of time in the recipe, just not at the end of the boil, and since I removed the hop bags, all bitterness extraction from the bittering hops (and the IBU's that came from aroma hops) would not be affected by boiling longer. That said, I'm not a chemist or anything, so I'm not sure how boiling longer will affect the bitterness.