Fat Tire Amber Ale Clone - Kettle loss and starting gravity

[wsmith1625]

I'm planning to brew a Fat Tire Clone tomorrow. I use the Priceless BIAB calculator to get my water volumes and strike temperatures, so I started entering my numbers. When I was done, the original gravity was way too high. I want the finished product to match the recipe, so I started increasing the total water volume by increasing the kettle loss volume. Once I got to the target original gravity of 1.051, my kettle loss was at 1.4 gallons which is way more than I usually leave in the kettle. Is this okay? I hate the idea of wasting 1.4 gallons of wort, but I only want to package 5 gallons of finished beer.

 

[Carolina_Matt]

Instead of adding more water (and throwing out a gallon of wort), can you just scale down the recipe (proportionately) to get your desired gravity? See what happens if you use 90% of the grain instead of 100% of the grain.

 

[wsmith1625]

Instead of adding more water (and throwing out a gallon of wort), can you just scale down the recipe (proportionately) to get your desired gravity? See what happens if you use 90% of the grain instead of 100% of the grain.

I thought of that, but I just started all grain brewing and only use kits, so if I scale it down I have no use for the remaining grain. I'm more concerned that my logic to add water to hit my target original gravity is wrong. That doing this is going to effect my beer negatively in a way that I have not considered.

 

[wsmith1625]

So my brew day went well, but I still overshot my original gravity by 10 points. I was at 1.061 instead of my target 1.051. I ground my grain really fine, rollers set at .025 and I did a sparge. I guess I'll leave off the sparge next batch. This is my second all grain batch, so I'm still learning the process. Thanks!

 

[FlabbyRoach]

I use BIAB calculator @ biabcalculator.com
Find it easier.

 

[wilserbrewer]

So my brew day went well, but I still overshot my original gravity by 10 points. I was at 1.061 instead of my target 1.051. I ground my grain really fine, rollers set at .025 and I did a sparge. I guess I'll leave off the sparge next batch. This is my second all grain batch, so I'm still learning the process. Thanks!

Sure you can leave out the sparge step as you will extract a little less sugar from the grain, aka lower efficiency.

Moving forward, adjust the total water to hit volume desired, and grain weight to hit desired gravity.

This is done by trial and error sort of, then when you learn where your efficiency is you’ll have more accurate data to put into the calculator....