Fermentable and Heat

Does the boiling process increase, decrease or have no affect on the overall starting gravity of the wert?

Dan

as boiling removes water and leaves the sugars behind, your wort gravity will increase

Dan,

Think about it for a second.

What does boiling do? What happens if you put a bunch of sugar into 2 cups of water and let it boil for a long time? The water...boils off. The sugar? It stays put.

As such, the boil removes a portion of the water in the wort; as such, it increases the solid/liquid ratio, and thus, increases the gravity. This is why, unless you're adding water after the boil, it's important to know how much water will boil off during the boil, so you can overcompensate beforehand. ProMash, etc., has a calculator to figure that out.

It does a bunch of other stuff to.

Lets you add hops, takes out the unwanted protiens, sanitises, allows you to add Irish moss.