High Evaporation Rate

I have been experiencing a high evaporation rate with my new brew pot, up to 20%. I have tried to slow the boil, but doesn't seem to make a big difference. Not such a big deal with extract, but causes problems with all grain.

Would it be better to add some additional water to the wort before the boil or add top-off water after?

spin02 said:

I have been experiencing a high evaporation rate with my new brew pot, up to 20%. I have tried to slow the boil, but doesn't seem to make a big difference. Not such a big deal with extract, but causes problems with all grain.

Would it be better to add some additional water to the wort before the boil or add top-off water after?

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Can you just use more sparge water, to get a larger boil volume? You can safely sparge with up to .5 gallons per pound, if you're worrying about oversparging.

The reason for the higher boil off rate is probably because your new pot is wider than the old one. Wider pots have a larger boil off rate because of the larger surface area.

Extract, I'd at before the boil but, that's just me.

For all grain, it should be part of your sparge water needs.

Are you not able to turn down your burner any further? I think that you should aim at 10-15%/hr. It takes heat to evaporate. Less heat, less evaporation.

Kai

GilaMinumBeer said:

Extract, I'd at before the boil but, that's just me.

For all grain, it should be part of your sparge water needs.

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plus 1 to dat.

I was having a similar problem ever since I bought one of the 15g B3 kettles. The combination of the larger diameter, too hot a burner, and sub 30% humidity was causing me to have to up my pre-boil to 7.5-8 gallons for 5.5 gallon batches.

I've been fiddling w/ the burner and keeping it as low as possible to keep a decent rolling boil, and it has definitely helped...so I would try that. I was honestly surprised how low of heat was required to maintain the boil once it got there.

YooperBrew said:

Can you just use more sparge water, to get a larger boil volume? You can safely sparge with up to .5 gallons per pound, if you're worrying about oversparging.

The reason for the higher boil off rate is probably because your new pot is wider than the old one. Wider pots have a larger boil off rate because of the larger surface area.

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Correct, my new pot is wider. I will try adding more sparge water this weekend. My concern was dropping below 1.010. I don't have a refractometer and didn't know a practical way to check gravity of the sparge.

I don't have a refractometer and didn't know a practical way to check gravity of the sparge.

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If you're worried about over-sparging but need the extra volume, why not try a thinner mash? I've been doing 2 qt/lb mashes almost exclusively lately w/ great results. My efficiency actually went up a few points even w/ the reduced sparge amount.

CharlosCarlies said:

If you're worried about over-sparging but need the extra volume, why not try a thinner mash? I've been doing 2 qt/lb mashes almost exclusively lately w/ great results. My efficiency actually went up a few points even w/ the reduced sparge amount.

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Awesome. I might give that a try. Do you batch sparge?

spin02 said:

Awesome. I might give that a try. Do you batch sparge?

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Yeah I normally do a double batch w/ no mashout...but my setup makes it kind of annoying to sparge twice so I'm going to try doing just one this evening.

Even without checking the runnings, generally you can safely use up to .5 gallons of water per pound of grain in your sparging.

You can take an SG of the runnings at the end to be safe, but with batch sparging that really isn't much of an issue.