Is it against the rules?

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Twabe

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Tri-Cities, WA
Hello all,

I am new to the forum so please forgive my newbness.

I made my 5th AG batch (& 7th total - since I started brewing in Jan '06) this afternoon(eve), and was wondering:

Is it against the rules to add more wort to the boil, up to 30 minutes into a 90 minute boil, to maximize on the fermentable output (to = 7.25 gals in the fermenter)?

Basically, I was topping off my 38.5 quart ss pot to the point where I could contain it in the pot and not on the floor of my garage. It seemed to me that the color of the sparge was still quite dark at the end of the mashing process.

I probably added 1.5 gallons to the boil. from this extra sparge. As much work (& enjoyment) brewing is, I wanted to maximize on the output.

I am using a 5gal Igloo cooler as a mash tun (w/ss toilet water intake as a filter) , and another 5 gal Igloo cooler as the liquor vessel & my 7 gal plastic fermenter as the overflow liquor vessel.

My strike temp was 168, & the mash stayed hotter than I expected, 161, then very gradually down to 156 @ 90 minutes.

I am not doing any fancy tests to see how efficient I was.

My Dad's ancient hydrometer measured 1.05 @ the yeast pitch, If I am reading it right.

Recipe:

~13.5 lbs two row premium
1.5 lbs crystal 80L
1.5 biscuit 25L
4 OZ Northern Brewer
3 OZ Kent Goldings (+1 oz to be dryhopped)
London Ale yeast

PS: Today while attempting to vent one of my yeast bottles from the fridge from a previous batch, It exploded over the whole operation, the ceiling, the shoplight, and me.

PSS: For some reason, the exploding yeast bottle was a indication of the sloppiest, boiling overest, clumsiest, spillingest batch so far!

Any wisdom would be appreciated.

-t-
 
Twabe said:
Hello all,

I am new to the forum so please forgive my newbness.

I made my 5th AG batch (& 7th total - since I started brewing in Jan '06) this afternoon(eve), and was wondering:

Is it against the rules to add more wort to the boil, up to 30 minutes into a 90 minute boil, to maximize on the fermentable output (to = 7.25 gals in the fermenter)?


Any wisdom would be appreciated.

-t-

First and foremost Welcome to the boards. First, I'm in awe of you brewing AG since starting brewing in January. 2 Extract batches then into AG? RIGHTEOUS!! :rockin:


Not AG brewing myself, I'm guessing that what gets the job done for you is what will work... I'm guessing of course. So to me the mantra applies. Relax. Don't Worry....

However....

Those far more knowledgeable than I, and there are MANY here ;) can get you what ya need.

Welcome again!


Ize
 
Twabe said:
I made my 5th AG batch (& 7th total - since I started brewing in Jan '06) this afternoon(eve), and was wondering:

Is it against the rules to add more wort to the boil, up to 30 minutes into a 90 minute boil, to maximize on the fermentable output (to = 7.25 gals in the fermenter)?


PS: Today while attempting to vent one of my yeast bottles from the fridge from a previous batch, It exploded over the whole operation, the ceiling, the shoplight, and me.

PSS: For some reason, the exploding yeast bottle was a indication of the sloppiest, boiling overest, clumsiest, spillingest batch so far!

Any wisdom would be appreciated.

-t-
You should be fine adding more of the runnings 30 minutes into the boil.
That is a very high grain bill for a 5 gallon cooler. I ran your grain bill through ProMash and to fully utilize the grains you need about 4 1/4 gallons of strike water for the mash and about 8 1/2 gallons of sparge water. When all is said and done you are looking at about 10 gallons of wort pre-boil.
What size batch are you making and what OG were you shooting for? Sounds to me like you will need to do batch sparging for that much grain. I get an OG of 1.092 and a boil time of about 2 1/2 hours for a 5 gallon batch
Did you have your yeast container capped? You should keep your harvested yeast in the fridge with an air lock instead of a cap to vent the pressure. Once the air lock activity stops you could probably cap it but once you set the bottle at room temperature it could become a bomb again.
 
Welcome to the forum.

Adding extra wort makes sense to me. I dont think there are very many hard and fast rules with respect to brewing. Maybe one is don't pitch yeast into boiling wort.

Can I pick your brain. I never heard of using a toilet intake as a filter. How does it work, what kind do you use and how do you tie it in to the cooler?
 
Can I pick your brain. I never heard of using a toilet intake as a filter. How does it work, what kind do you use and how do you tie it in to the cooler?

it is the stainless steel braid on the outside you use
 
I do the same thing, but I call it batch sparging. I've noticed that a problem batch will have multiple things go wrong, you don't just have the yeast blow up, but the mash gets stuck, you don't have the right bittering hops, you forget the flavor hops and have to do a longer boil. And then someone drops a sausage in the wort and the cat tries to retrieve it. Somehow, it's still beer.

Given your high strike temperature, you probably have a lot of unfermentable sugars, so don't be surprised if the final gravity is higher than expected.
 
About the only problem I could see with adding wort late in the boil is that you may not get your hot break out of that portion, lending to cloudy beer. That would only really happen if you added it in the last few minutes before flame-out though. I'm sure your batch will be fine.

Welcome a'board!
 
davidkrau said:
Can I pick your brain. I never heard of using a toilet intake as a filter. How does it work, what kind do you use and how do you tie it in to the cooler?

As long as it's not a toilet exit :D
 
It is just the stainless mesh that covers the water inlet for the toilet tank. Is this what you call a bazooka tube? It is about a foot long, which is probably too long.
 
Thank you for the kind words. There is so much info on the internet that going to AG was a natural step for me. I like to cook too, so working from scratch is my favorite way of doing things.
 
Richbrewer, thank you for the advice. I was shooting for 7 gallons or so. In my previous 4 AG brews, all which turned out pretty good, for some reason, I had 12 lbs of two row plus a couple of lbs of flavoring malts. The OG in most of them was 1.05 or so, but I was figuring that going heavy on the grains would make up for some of the perceived inefficiency of my batch sparging.

-t-
 
I really appreciate the welcome. I have a lot to learn, and I am very impressed with all the help and geniuine warmness of the site. Thanks!

-t-
 
I usually get more from my sparge than I'm willing to put in my kettle and as a result boil the extra on the stove with a little bittering hops added. As the wort level drops in my kettle I add from the pot on the stove to my kettle and boil away.
BTW way to go re the going AG, congrats.
 
Twabe said:
Richbrewer, thank you for the advice. I was shooting for 7 gallons or so. In my previous 4 AG brews, all which turned out pretty good, for some reason, I had 12 lbs of two row plus a couple of lbs of flavoring malts. The OG in most of them was 1.05 or so, but I was figuring that going heavy on the grains would make up for some of the perceived inefficiency of my batch sparging.

-t-

There's definitely something up with your setup if you're only hitting 1.05 with more than 12 lbs of grain. 12 lbs of two row alone should get you 1.061 OG in a 5.5 gallon batch if you're hitting 75% efficiency. My guess is you're getting 60% efficiency at best. Upping the grain bill is a poor patch for efficiency problems. You're experiencing low efficiency probably because of the design of your manifold (the tube) or your sparging practices or both.. IF this is in fact your problem then you are not effectively rinsing the sugar from the grains. Adding more grains will do little to fix things if you still are not going to efficiently rinse the sugar from them. Plus, you'll have to contend with your mash tun limitations.. and may have to go to a thicker mash ratio than you'd like. On top of all this, more grain means more sparge and thus a greater boil volume and a longer boil (more propane) to concentrate it down to the desired volume. For a 14lb grainbill you should have almost 8 gallons of sparge. Thus you also run into your kettle limitations.. you can of course just use a larger kettle (a keggle is great BTW) or add additional sparge as you boil but you are making more work for yourself. What you need to do is solve your efficiency issues - this is probably the cheapest and easiest solution to your problems.

Welcome to the community BTW, there are a lot of wise and helpful brewers around here.
 
Thank you all for the tips.

Lost, I think you are exactly right on the efficiency of the sparging process. My output drains from the cooler quite quickly, garden hose like, even after recycling the first few quarts. I have added a few cups of rice hulls to try and slow things down, but I think I will have to modify my manifold (shorten), or put some sort of ball valve on to regulate the flow out.

All told, I had about 38 quarts boiling, and dumped out a gallon or two from the mash tun at the end that I couldn't fit in the kettle. It did seem a bit shameful.
 
Twabe said:
Thank you all for the tips.

Lost, I think you are exactly right on the efficiency of the sparging process. My output drains from the cooler quite quickly, garden hose like, even after recycling the first few quarts. I have added a few cups of rice hulls to try and slow things down, but I think I will have to modify my manifold (shorten), or put some sort of ball valve on to regulate the flow out.

All told, I had about 38 quarts boiling, and dumped out a gallon or two from the mash tun at the end that I couldn't fit in the kettle. It did seem a bit shameful.

yeah, you really need some way to slow that sucker down... a ball valve would be wonderful but even a pinch clamp on your hose could help a bit... it should take 45 min. to 1 hr to sparge with a continuous/fly sparge setup

Rice hulls won't slow down the flow, they just help make a filter bed (and are used to help prevent a stuck sparge with wheat/rye/corn etc)...

Until you get a ball valve you might want to look at batch sparging for a better effect with your system... most brewers report needing to add 1 -3 lbs. grain to reach their "normal" efficiencies when batch sparging vs. fly sparging
http://www.bayareamashers.org/content/maindocs/BatchSparging.htm
http://home.elp.rr.com/brewbeer/files/nbsparge.html (WARNING!!! MATH FOUND IN SECOND LINK!!!:drunk: )

Also think about (if you have room in your fermenter for it) boiling the "left over" mash in a small pot on the stove with a small portion of your bittering hops, then just combine them in the fermenter... or, if you have a pressure cooker/canning setup, you could "can" it in mason jars and use it for starter wort to step up your yeast... (if you end up with extra wort again, take a gravity reading of what is left... just to see the SG of the remainder... if you are running it out fast, there may be only a little sugar in it anyway)

anyway, some things to think about

mikey
 
Chairman Cheyco said:
About the only problem I could see with adding wort late in the boil is that you may not get your hot break out of that portion, lending to cloudy beer. That would only really happen if you added it in the last few minutes before flame-out though. I'm sure your batch will be fine.

Welcome a'board!

I agree with this and add that if you get break with this second wort addition it will mess with your hops. So you will have to consider the effect (some reduction in bittering and so forth) and make adjustments in your recipe and process.

Personally I saw adjust your process so you simply avoid the need to add thie second wort.
 
Brewpastor said:
if you get break with this second wort addition it will mess with your hops.

Does that mean that you wait until hot break to add your hops? I guess If you do 90 minute boils that would be the case. I never thought of how hot break affected hop profile.
 
Chairman Cheyco said:
Does that mean that you wait until hot break to add your hops? I guess If you do 90 minute boils that would be the case. I never thought of how hot break affected hop profile.

My practice is to get my boil going and not add my hops until after hot break. Then I add the first hops and start the timer. My boils then generally end up being a TOTAL of 90 minutes or so, but hopped boil is generally in the 60 minute range.

Hot break is a coagulating of proteins and as this happens hop resin is also taken up, reducing the amount of resin available to be utilized. This is a factor one should take into account. It doesn't mean that adding hops before break is wrong, simply if you add them after break you will have a different result.
 
Actually, on this batch I put 2 oz of the Norther Brewer in the liquor cooler (if this is the right term), pre-boil. A brewer from a local microbrewery suggested this.

I was wondering too, is the boil essentially for hop flavor & evaporation, or does it have another function?
 
The boil causes proteins to precipitate out of the beer - this is your hot and cold break. It also cooks off some bad tasting chemicals (i.e. DMS) and extracts hop alpha acids (bitterness). Oh an it makes the batch nice and sterile so you can try and make sure the only bugs that get into it are the yeasties.

There's probably some other stuff going on but this is what immediately came to my mind.

Do a search for FWH (first wort hopping) and mash hopping - adding the hops to the Hot liquor tank would roughly equate to mash hopping. People have various opinions about these practices - some (me) think it's a waste of perfectly good hops. Others swear it adds something unique or smooth to the beer.
 
Twabe said:
Actually, on this batch I put 2 oz of the Norther Brewer in the liquor cooler (if this is the right term), pre-boil. A brewer from a local microbrewery suggested this.

I was wondering too, is the boil essentially for hop flavor & evaporation, or does it have another function?


:eek: I never thought about doing that! I think I am going to try it on my next brew.
 
Brewpastor said:
My practice is to get my boil going and not add my hops until after hot break. Then I add the first hops and start the timer. My boils then generally end up being a TOTAL of 90 minutes or so, but hopped boil is generally in the 60 minute range.

Hot break is a coagulating of proteins and as this happens hop resin is also taken up, reducing the amount of resin available to be utilized. This is a factor one should take into account. It doesn't mean that adding hops before break is wrong, simply if you add them after break you will have a different result.

Plus it gets damned messy if it breaks with hops. My only boil overs were when I added the hops before the hot break.
 
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