Do you add water to account for...

When making a 5 gal. batch do you add a extra half gal to account for evaporation? Or would that just water down the beerSeems like some recipes call for 5.5 gal or is that the intent?

Most people that do full boils are all grain brewers and run off like 6 gallons of wort to get around 5 this is to account for evaporation and get more sugar (increase efficiency), thus they do not want to top up it will dilute it.

If you are an extract brewer doing 5 gallon boils, it doesn't really matter the sugar is already in there. Adding more before the boil and boiling to 5 gallons adds more water and will require more energy to boil (marginally more though). The increased water may also help prevent caramilization. If you do add 6 gallons to boil you may need to adjust hops to maintain the same IBUs. Topping up to 5 gallons at the end with extract is fine too. Either way you want go with 5 gallons in the fermenter if that is what you are aiming for.

I top off to five gallons after the boil to help cool the wort. I don't pay attention to how much is boiled off. It doesn't water down the beer, but rather, it brings the concentrated (barely) wort back to its intended volume. If you don't top off, then you'll just have a slightly higher OG, I think. And a few bottles less too, of course

Just nitpicking here....


Boiling doesn't increase efficiency... because you have the same amount of sugars per volume of liquid. The efficiency increase comes when you boil down MORE wort than you would otherwise do.

Siphon 6 gallons and boil down to 5 will be less efficient than siphoning 7 gallons and boiling down to 5. But you can boil the same 6 gallons forever and it won't affect your efficiency one bit...

Damn Squirrels said:

Just nitpicking here....


Boiling doesn't increase efficiency... because you have the same amount of sugars per volume of liquid. The efficiency increase comes when you boil down MORE wort than you would otherwise do.

Siphon 6 gallons and boil down to 5 will be less efficient than siphoning 7 gallons and boiling down to 5. But you can boil the same 6 gallons forever and it won't affect your efficiency one bit...

Click to expand...

That is what I was trying to say...boiling down to your fermetnation volume will give you a better efficiency than topping up.

Top off to 5.5.

Yeah, the evaporation I was wondering about was happening in the fermenter, I always get about 1/2 GAL less finished ale. Thanks