Boiled over/low OG

Last night I started brewing a Hank’s Hefe Weizen kit. I was at the point of bringing the wort to boil. My next step was to add the hops at the first sign of a bubble. After hearing about the bridge that collapsed 2 miles from my house I turned on the news to get details. When I returned to the wort, it was at a full boil. I quickly poured in the hops and the wort boiled over. I lost a good amount. I finished the brewing process, and took a sample reading. My OG is 1.041 and is supposed to be between 1.049-1.053.

I'm assuming that I lost a good amount of the hops. How is this going to affect the end product? Thanks guys!

it might be a pretty mild beer but i wouldn't worry about it. what other hops did it have in it? flavor? aroma?

I think it'll be fine, just a bit lower in ABV, but that's ok for an easy drinking summer hefe. As for the hops, again hefe's are traditionally not too hop heavy so you'll probably be alright there as well. I would just chalk it up to experience for the future and know that you're just one of many that this has happened to.

CharlieB: The hops were Tettnang bittering hops for flavor. No aroma hops.

Good to here that it'll be alright. I'll be purchasing a 5 gallon brewing pot this weekend. What a mess that was.

If you're lucky, you lost hops in proportion to the sugar you lost, so your beer will be well-balanced (no science behind this, just wishful thinking )

uniconfis said:

Good to here that it'll be alright. I'll be purchasing a 5 gallon brewing pot this weekend. What a mess that was.

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If you think a bigger pot will prevent boilovers...well, good luck with that.

Not sure how big your current pot is, or how much you were boiling, but I'm also reasonably certain that under the same circumstances you would have boiled over the 5-gal pot too.

You can boil over in pretty much any pot. If you're going to be spending good money on a pot, get one that's at least 7.5 gallons (10 is better, keggles are better still), that will let you do full boils with a decent amount of headspace and can be used if/when you move to AG.

I'd love to get a 7.5 or 10 gal. Unfortunately I don't have much storage space. Me and girlfriend live in a 520sqft condo. The one I was using was a 3 gal. Hopefully in two years I'll have a house with my own brewing room in the basement (dream on).

keep in mind, your stove may not be able to boil a 5gallon stockpot. gas should work, but electric may not...and a ceramic top electric range can be extremely rough to work with.

If you need to use room efficiently, just store most or all of your brewing supplies inside the kettle. That's a pretty good use of space.

yeah, I guess I could always find the space.
Malkore, my stove is gas but it would take forever for that thing to boil 5 gallons. I've always limited my wort to 2 gallons and it'll take a good hour to bring that up to a boil.

Well I transfered the hefeweizen into the 2nd stage carboy last night. Everything seems to be ok. The beer tasted pretty good. The FG should be at 1.010-12 and right now I'm at 1.012.
Thanks for the help everyone.

I'm two days away from bottling the hefeweizen and decided to take a reading and taste it. the gravity reading is at 1.10 (perfect). The first thing I noticed was the strong smell of bananas. Second was how deep of a gold color it was. I swear it looked just like urine (not that I've pissed in a cup to compare). But it tastes like a light version of hefeweisen. I pretty much expected this due to the boil over and low OG.

Any thoughts?