How long isto long to boil?

He directions call for a 90 min boil. But that apparently will still leave me with around 7 gallons. Can I just keep boiling? I guess my numbers could be off. New to beer smith. So I dunno. I want a 5 gallon batch.

Are you doing a kit?

In my humble opinion you don't want to boil off two gallons.

You need to figure your specific gravity. Do you have a hydrometer?

If you don't have enough fermentor volume, I recommend finding an extra fermentor. Do you have a couple stainless steel pots with lids. Those would work. You have to bottle after about a week with this method.

It helps you know how much your beer has changed when you are done.

What is your recipe?

Have you already started boiling?

Man I have more questions than answers.

If you start with way more then you need, and you know how much you will lose during the boil, then just boil longer in the beginning. So if you start with 9 gallons and expect to lose 2 gallons during a 90 minute boil, and you are looking for 5 gallons, just boil until you only have 7 gallons before you add any hops. So essentially, boil until you have the proper starting volume before you 'start' the timed boil and your hop additions.

Snowhere said:

If you start with way more then you need, and you know how much you will lose during the boil, then just boil longer in the beginning. So if you start with 9 gallons and expect to lose 2 gallons during a 90 minute boil, and you are looking for 5 gallons, just boil until you only have 7 gallons before you add any hops. So essentially, boil until you have the proper starting volume before you 'start' the timed boil and your hop additions.

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man knows what he's talking about

on black friday 2011 i brewed RIS and i made a stupid mistake of adding way way wayyyyy too much strike water and i had to boil the wort for around 6 hours to get down to 5.5gal i was planing for, its still bulk aging but the sample taste goood, maybe cuz its RIS but now im not afraid to boil longer, just remember to hold your hops so you hit your schedule

Long boils caramelize the malt which will make the color darker for sure and may also impart slightly more caramel flavor. Sometimes that's good. Sometimes it's not.

Probably a gallon an hour is my boil rate. Only done two batches and that seemed be how it was working out.

I would always advise to boil to your desired OG as well. If you have a little extra wort, you can either do a mini ferment to do some testing, or just throw it out.
Boiling for volume only can really get you a different beer if you're not careful.

So you take a gravity reading of your boiling wort till it's at the og?

benzy4010 said:

So you take a gravity reading of your boiling wort till it's at the og?

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No, you want the preboil SG to be at the correct preboil OG and then boil for an hour.

I guess this is a dumb question, but if you want to make a 5 gallon batch and you boil off 1 gallon an hour and you're doing a 90 minute boil (which may not even be necessary), why don't you just start with less wort? Most of us just sparge up to our boil volume. You can add a bit of water at the end if you boil off too much or are too high on your OG.

It's easy to just start with 6.25- 6.5 gallons if you don't know how much you'll boil off and top up if you boil off too much.

Good point didn't think about adding water figured it had to be boiled