playing with beer smith

So ive been toying around with beer smith. I put in the ingredients of my wheat ale:

6.3 pounds wheat syrup
1oz tettnang

The instructions i got said boil with 2.5 gallons of water, so i did. Ive been reading that doing a full boil will lead to a better tasting beer. So i put in beer smith that i started off with a 5 gallon boil instead of a 2.5 gallon. The only thing that i see changed was the IBUs.

2.5 gallon = 11 IBU
5 gallon = 16.4

Im just becoming familiar with IBUs so i have no idea what an IBU tastes like. how much difference is that? Do you think i should always do 5 gallon boils instead of 2.5? what are the pros/cons?

Adam

nootay said:

So ive been toying around with beer smith. I put in the ingredients of my wheat ale:

6.3 pounds wheat syrup
1oz tettnang

The instructions i got said boil with 2.5 gallons of water, so i did. Ive been reading that doing a full boil will lead to a better tasting beer. So i put in beer smith that i started off with a 5 gallon boil instead of a 2.5 gallon. The only thing that i see changed was the IBUs.

2.5 gallon = 11 IBU
5 gallon = 16.4

Im just becoming familiar with IBUs so i have no idea what an IBU tastes like. how much difference is that? Do you think i should always do 5 gallon boils instead of 2.5? what are the pros/cons?

Adam

Click to expand...

Wow- what a question! Your question is a tough one, believe it or not! In this case, a difference of 5 IBUs is negligible. In some cases, though, it's a very big difference. In those cases, my answer is still "yes, do a full boil if you can! But........" Sometimes you'll have to reduce the bittering hops to get the same beer that you wanted. In some cases, the difference is huge.

The short answer is that if you have a way to cool a full boil (that seems to be the limiting factor for many) and have a pot big enough, then do it! You may need to reduce the bittering hops slightly, but that's easy to do. I start with about 6.25 gallons to get to 5.0 gallons at the finish.

i have a 10 gallon pot and a 50ft wort chiller, so i think my answer is yes i have the means to do it. According to beer smith, i should start with 5.72 gallons, but im not real sure how exactly its calculating that. I like your answer of starting with 6.25 gallons.

One thing i dont understand, is that if i manually change my boil volume in beer smith, the estimated OG doesnt change. I would think if my ingredients stayed the same, but i started with 9 gallons instead of 6 gallons, my OG would be a good bit lower. Is this not true? In my head its just watering down the wort, but maybe something else is going on.

So far im pretty impressed with beersmith. For now ill plug the kits in to beer smith that i have, see what the IBUs are supposed to be at 2.5, change to 5 gallons, and adjust hops accordingly to fit the original specs.

nootay said:

Im just becoming familiar with IBUs so i have no idea what an IBU tastes like. how much difference is that? Do you think i should always do 5 gallon boils instead of 2.5? what are the pros/cons?

Click to expand...

IBU is a way to quantify how much bitterness you have.

Your question relates to hop utilization. If the density of sugars in the boil is greater, hop utilization is less, and therefore you get less IBUs from the hops. So this is why in the 2.5 gallon boil the IBUs are less, because the density of the boil is higher than the 5 gallon scenario.

The pros/cons relating to this is that you can use less hops to achieve the same amount of IBUs (or bitterness) in your finished beer if you can boil a greater volume.

gotcha, that makes sense. I can see where that will be helpful when buying hops in bulk

Is the 6.3 lbs of wheat extract all wheat or a blend of wheat and something else like 60%wheat and 40% barley? You might hold 1/2 of the extract back in the boil for the final 10 minutes if you want a lighter color of ale. Just something i read from John Palmer's How to Brew.

nootay said:

One thing i dont understand, is that if i manually change my boil volume in beer smith, the estimated OG doesnt change. I would think if my ingredients stayed the same, but i started with 9 gallons instead of 6 gallons, my OG would be a good bit lower. Is this not true? In my head its just watering down the wort, but maybe something else is going on.

Click to expand...

It's because the OG is based on how much goes into the fermenter, not how much you're boiling. The starting SG of the boil, however, would be much lower if you put the same ingredients in 9 gallons of water instead of 6 gallons. No sugars boil away during the boil, only water. If you use ingredients for a 5 gallon batch but boil it in 9 gallons, you have to boil for a few hours to get down to the 5 gallons you're going to put into the fermenter. The boil off rate seems to be between 10 to 20% per hour (depending on ambient temperature, relative humidity, etc.). But during the boil, no matter how long you boil, the absolute amount of sugar in the wort won't change, so your OG (into the fermenter) is the same.

EDIT: In beersmith, you can look at the brewsheet (I think it's a button called "Preview Brewsheet" at the top of the recipe page) to see what effect you have on the starting boil gravity when you change the boil volumes. When you go to 9 gallons vs. 5 gallons, the starting gravity should be way lower. The OG should stay the same.

nootay said:

One thing i dont understand, is that if i manually change my boil volume in beer smith, the estimated OG doesnt change. I would think if my ingredients stayed the same, but i started with 9 gallons instead of 6 gallons, my OG would be a good bit lower. Is this not true? In my head its just watering down the wort, but maybe something else is going on.

Click to expand...

I think it has to do with you batch size. The OG is after the boil, when you reach your batch volume. You're just concentrating the wort as you boil off the water.

Edit: Frodo beat me to it!

Ahh ok. I was interpreting it like you start the boil with 9 gallons, boil for 60 minutes, then only take 5 gallons of whatever is left after the 60 minute boil. Im not sure where 5 gallons is in my brew pot, i guess i should figure that out so i know where to boil down to. How much is generally lost when you cool the wort?

Beersmith default is 4%. Always works for me.

cool deal, thanks for all the info

In my stovetop set up, I boiled off about a gallon an hour. Using my big burner, I boiled off about 1.5 gallons per hour.

You can start with 6 gallons, and add water as needed at the end, if you're unsure the first time.

In order for Beersmith to know how much water you need to start with it needs your boil-off rate. The only way to know how your rate is to physically boil, say 7-9 gal., for 60 minutes. Then measure how much you have at the end of the boil. You'll be able to calclulate your boil off rate. Now, depending how hard your boil is your results will vary (i.e. a turbulent roiling boil will boil off more than a small rolling boil). If you can measure the water at it's near boiling temp and then let it cool you'll be able to measure how much you boil off and how much your lose to cooling all in one shot.

For me, on my glass-top electric stove, in a 5 gal pot. Boiling 3 gallons my rate is near 12-14%. With 4+ gallons my rate drops to around 10% loss.