Losing Too Much Beer in the sparge???

This is really confounding me and I'm looking for suggestions. I have a 7 gallon brew pot and I boil with it almost full, then I sparge it into the fermenter and when all is said and done I only have about 3+ gallons (< 4 anyway). I am just not understanding how this is possible? I topped off last night with a full gallon after all was said and done and I barely have 4 gallons.

Explain your entire process please.

The sparge is when you rinse your grains after the mash.

Are you saying that you lose too much due to boil-off in your kettle?

It's common to lose a lot of volume while sparging... but please clarify. What are you sparging? Sparging is where you rinse the mashed grains with ~180*F water to extract additional sugars. You shouldn't sparge directly from the lauter tun into the fermenter.

It sounds like you mean after boiling the wort in a 7-gallon brew pot and cooling it, you have under 4 gallons. This can happen with a low relative humidity, long boil time, or having the burner on too high. Chill shrinkage, hop sludge, and hot break/cold break material can also take up a lot of volume if you're filtering your wort before going to the fermenter.

It could also be that your brewpot is smaller than you think. If it's not graduated, use a measuring cup to measure water into the brewpot, and make gallon markings on the outside to see where you're at. Same with the fermenter. This can also help you see how much you're losing during the boil.

First off sparging is what you do when you drain the wort into the boil kettle, not when you drain it into the fermentation vessel.

If you have a 7 gallon brew pot you are probably getting maybe 5-5.5 gal in the kettle before boiling. If you had much more than that it'd boil right on over the second it started rolling. If you start with 5.5 gallons, and evaporate an average of 18 percent per hour, you're going to lose a gallon on a 1 hour boil.

A 7 gallon kettle is cutting it REALLY close for a 5 gallon batch, and is impossible more or less for a 6 gallon batch. It sounds like you aren't measuring your pre-boil volume! Better fix that. Get some sort of stick, pipe, something and pour one gallon increments into the kettle, dip the stick in and mark it w/a sharpie at the water line. This way before you start your boil you just dip the stick in and know exactly how much you have in there.

My guess is you are starting with about 5.5 gallons and burning off almost two during the boil, which is easy if you boil too hard, have the right weather conditions, or have a low-wide boil kettle w/a large surface area. My suggestion is to first measure pre and post boil volume with the stick to know exactly what your evap rate is. Boil the same every time and you will be ok there. If possible get a 10 gallon pot so you can actually have 6 to 7 gallons in the kettle and end up w/5-6 once you are done. My kettle is wide so I know I burn off closer to 1.5 gallons per hour and I sparge off an extra 1/2 gal to compensate.

In your case since you are limited in kettle volume, I'd try to squeeze in as much as possible w/o boiling over, boil gently, and just accept that you'll have to top off a gallon or two of fresh water into the fermentor. It's not a terrible problem.

Hope this helps.

My system loss is nearly 3+ gallons.

Ok, well I obviously still do not have the vocabulary correct. I mean the process of splashing the wort from the brew pot to the fermenter so it can oxygenate. What is that called? That is what I mean. I had at least 5 gallons boiling last night and lost some to the steam from the boil but after that process I don't know the name of I had only 12 liters (3.17 gallons) in the fermenter. Is there a way to minimize this loss?

XXguy said:

Explain your entire process please.

The sparge is when you rinse your grains after the mash.

Are you saying that you lose too much due to boil-off in your kettle?

Click to expand...

I do not yet have a mash tun. I mash in my boil pot.
I mash.
I sparge (now that I know what it really means )
I boil
I put in hop additions
I chill (w/ immersion chiller)
I ??? (move wort to bucket while aerating )
I pitch
I leave it along.

It is the ??? stage where I am asking what can be done, not to clear the finished product but, to have less trub in the primary when finished. I am hoping to get to a point where I can re-pitch yeast from a prior slurry but I have so much trub that it doesn't seem feasible. Thankx in advance.

Hard boils and high boil-off impact color, caramelization and hop utilization. Sounds like you are boiling too hard. Try reducing the heat a little.

If you are leaving wort behind to minimize trub, that's unnecessary. Read up on yeast washing if you want to reuse yeast without the trub.

It sounds like you aren't designing your recipe for a finished volume but for a preboil volume. If you started with 5 gallons in the boil pot, then boiled, the difference is due to evaporation. I routinely start a 11G batch with a little more than 14G preboil. After boiling, trub and chiller loss I get my finished volume of 11G. Dont worry about sending the break material to the fermenter. To use the yeast again it should be washed after fermentation. Search yeast washing for step by step directions.

bernerbrau said:

It's common to lose a lot of volume while sparging... but please clarify. What are you sparging? Sparging is where you rinse the mashed grains with ~180*F water to extract additional sugars. You shouldn't sparge directly from the lauter tun into the fermenter.

It sounds like you mean after boiling the wort in a 7-gallon brew pot and cooling it, you have under 4 gallons. This can happen with a low relative humidity, long boil time, or having the burner on too high. Chill shrinkage, hop sludge, and hot break/cold break material can also take up a lot of volume if you're filtering your wort before going to the fermenter.

It could also be that your brewpot is smaller than you think. If it's not graduated, use a measuring cup to measure water into the brewpot, and make gallon markings on the outside to see where you're at. Same with the fermenter. This can also help you see how much you're losing during the boil.

Click to expand...

Excellent.

david_42 said:

Hard boils and high boil-off impact color, caramelization and hop utilization. Sounds like you are boiling too hard. Try reducing the heat a little.

If you are leaving wort behind to minimize trub, that's unnecessary. Read up on yeast washing if you want to reuse yeast without the trub.

Click to expand...

Yeast washing. Now theres something I will look into. Thankx.

kontreren said:

This is really confounding me and I'm looking for suggestions. I have a 7 gallon brew pot and I boil with it almost full, then I sparge it into the fermenter and when all is said and done I only have about 3+ gallons (< 4 anyway). I am just not understanding how this is possible? I topped off last night with a full gallon after all was said and done and I barely have 4 gallons.

Click to expand...

In my experience, you will loose wort/beer volume in two main ways:

1. evaporation while it boils
2. volume taken up by sediment and trub, which you leave behind when you transfer the wort to the fermenter, and the beer to the secondary/bottling bucket.

The two answers that seem most apparent are to either start with more volume at the start of your boil or plan on topping off with water afterwards.

Cheers!

Great responses all. I haven't replied to everyone but read all your posts. I do boil pretty "hard" as you call it. I keep a high heat so I get a rolling boil. I can reduce that some. Glad to hear that what I'm experiencing is somewhat "normal". Thankx all.

kontreren said:

I do not yet have a mash tun. I mash in my boil pot.
I mash.
I sparge (now that I know what it really means )
I boil
I put in hop additions
I chill (w/ immersion chiller)
I ??? (move wort to bucket while aerating )
I pitch
I leave it along.

It is the ??? stage where I am asking what can be done, not to clear the finished product but, to have less trub in the primary when finished. I am hoping to get to a point where I can re-pitch yeast from a prior slurry but I have so much trub that it doesn't seem feasible. Thankx in advance.

Click to expand...

I think we call ??? "pouring"

You're boiling off quite a bit but then there's also contraction occurring from boil temp to chilled temp. The key for you is to collect an extra gallon of wort (add one gallon to your sparge amount) and either boil that in a separate pot or just simply add it back to the main kettle as your volume slowly drops. Make sure it's all added prior to the T-15minute mark to ensure hot break and sanitization.

kontreren said:

I do not yet have a mash tun. I mash in my boil pot.
I mash.
I sparge (now that I know what it really means )
I boil
I put in hop additions
I chill (w/ immersion chiller)
I ??? (move wort to bucket while aerating )
I pitch
I leave it along.

It is the ??? stage where I am asking what can be done, not to clear the finished product but, to have less trub in the primary when finished. I am hoping to get to a point where I can re-pitch yeast from a prior slurry but I have so much trub that it doesn't seem feasible. Thankx in advance.

Click to expand...

How big is the mash pot and the boil kettle? If they are the same vessel, then you will never get as much volume of wort from the MLT into the kettle, as a ton of that space is taken up by the grain. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you equipment and process.

As far as yeast, check out the yeast washing threads. You certainly can separate the yeast from the trub! I think it's fun and have started to do this now. Just to build up a bank of a few strains I like. It's not hard.

Homercidal said:

How big is the mash pot and the boil kettle? If they are the same vessel, then you will never get as much volume of wort from the MLT into the kettle, as a ton of that space is taken up by the grain. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you equipment and process.

As far as yeast, check out the yeast washing threads. You certainly can separate the yeast from the trub! I think it's fun and have started to do this now. Just to build up a bank of a few strains I like. It's not hard.

Click to expand...

Yeah, just not making myself clear but I have my answer now thank you and I just reviewed the Yeast Washing Illustration on here and I'm in. That sounds great. I'm going to start doing that as well. Brewing is cool. And I think I'll get a mash tun tonight. Its getting old using the brew pot to mash in. Thankx.

Make a home depot special mash tun, they work something awesome

cvstrat said:

Make a home depot special mash tun, they work something awesome

Click to expand...

I'm trying but it leaks.

Put more teflon tape around the threads and between the washer and other metal piece it mates to (ball valve or coupler). I can almost guarantee that's where the leak is.

Lil' Sparky said:

Put more teflon tape around the threads and between the washer and other metal piece it mates to (ball valve or coupler). I can almost guarantee that's where the leak is.

Click to expand...

I had to retool. After many trips to Lowes, a lot of trial and error I finally got the right combination that would tighten down enough to work just right. I fitted all my parts together and tightened the dog mess out of it and tonight 9/9/09 I'm mashing my first in my new mash tun. A Monkey on the Mainline Porter.