Way too much evaporation???

I made a Rye Ale extract tonight that called for 4.25 lbs of Light DME as well as 7.5 lbs of various grains, specialty grains, and rye flakes. I boiled 2.5 gallons of water and dumped it into the fermentor. I then steeped the 7.5 lbs of grains in 3.25 gallons of water. After removing both nylon steeping bags, I brought it to a boil and added the DME and hops...yada, yada, yada. At no point did I add any more water to the brew pot and was only expecting .50-.75 gallons of water to evaporate. At the end of the 90 minute boil, I only had ONE GALLON OF WATER LEFT IN THE BREW POT!! I'm chalking this up to a lot of the water being sucked up from the 7.5 lbs of grains. I boiled 1.5 gallons of water to top off the brew pot. Will this affect my final product? It is now cooling in the garage and I will take a hydrometer reading in the morning to find out the OG. The 1 gallon from the brew pot at the end of the boil was thick so I'm thinking I should be okay.

Thanks in advance,

evans5150

did you factor in grain absorption? you can dilute down to your intended starting grav with bottled water

I added boiled water to get to 5 gallons. The temp went to 70 degrees this morning and I took a hydrometer reading. Unfortunately, the OG measures at 1.049 and the recipe calls for 1.072. Not sure what went wrong but I'll ferment it as is. I'm sure it will still taste great.

evans5150 said:

I made a Rye Ale extract tonight that called for 4.25 lbs of Light DME as well as 7.5 lbs of various grains, specialty grains, and rye flakes.

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That's a partial mash, not extract, recipe! You needed to do this to convert the starches to sugar....

I got the recipe from the 150 Clone Recipes book by BYO. It says it is an extract with grain recipe. I steeped the grains for 45 minutes at 164 degrees. Is there a formula that can tell me how much extract I can add to the 5 gallons of water I already have? Could I take 2 or 3 pounds of liquid pale extract and boil it in 1 gallon of water and up the gravity?

evans5150 said:

I got the recipe from the 150 Clone Recipes book by BYO. It says it is an extract with grain recipe. I steeped the grains for 45 minutes at 164 degrees. Is there a formula that can tell me how much extract I can add to the 5 gallons of water I already have? Could I take 2 or 3 pounds of liquid pale extract and boil it in 1 gallon of water and up the gravity?

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when i do it that way i have two pots, one at around 156 or so and one at 175. when im done the "soak" in the 156 pot i "sparge" in the other one to get all the residual sugars out of the grain. 7 pounds of grain seems alot for a PM.......you may have been better suited doing an all grain mash. As for the low gravity- you can just calculate and add DME to get it up to your desired SG