Compensating for small boil kettle

Over the past few batches I've been constantly adding to the planned pre-boil volume and also adding some water during the boil to try reaching my 5.5 gallon target into the fermenter. My kettle is only 30 qts. so 6.75g is max for me.

I always seem to be a little short. I'll start with 6.75g pre-boil & still end up with right at 5g into the fermenter.

I'd like to try something to compensate for the lost half gallon. The idea I have would be to target 7 gallons pre-boil volume with a batch sparge. I'd take a half gallon from the 2nd runnings & set it aside. The rest would go into the boil kettle and brew as normal. Then after 45 min. of boiling or so when there has been sufficient boil off leaving room for another half gallon, add the half gallon that had been set aside back into the boil kettle for the last 15 min.

Would this be an unwise thing to do to reach my 5.5g target into the fermenter? Are there other ideas I could consider? or should I just stick with always ending up at 5g and take a couple bottle hit on each batch?

Is all your loss evaporation, or are you leaving wort in the deadspace in the kettle?

Are you hitting your targeted mash efficiency?

Your suggestion will work, and you should be able to add the extra half-gallon to the kettle pretty early in the boil, if you're boiling off 1.75 gal in 1 hour.

Another way to do it would be just to adjust your recipe so you get all the sugars you need in the 5 gallons from the kettle, then top up with water.

Example: if you want 5.5 gallons at 1.060 in the fermenter
- collect 6.75 preboil gallons at 1.049
- boil to 5 gallons at 1.066
- dilute with water in fermenter to get 5.5 gallons at 1.060

I like that idea better. Looks like I already need to upgrade my mash tun from 5 to 10 gallons to be able to increase my grain bill for the higher gravity target.

I seem to lose about 1 gallon in a 60 min. boil, but for some reason when the wort is cooled (30 min.) and I strain out the break material & hops, I only get about 5 gallons into the fermenter.

compensating for small size? Buy a Camaro....

I'd be concerned about not getting the DMS boiled out in that late addition wort addition.

Vegetable/cabbage flavors in beer don't sound tastey to me.

I'd just boil that wort separately for an hour, no hops, then add to the main kettle or primary.