Sounds like you could set your efficiency higher. But boil off rate will govern how much wort you wind up with.
taking the homebrew plunge- please help me decide the best route!
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so could it end up being a happy coincidence that the boil off rate was low since the gravity was higher pre-boil? will the extra volume help balance it out?
Ideally, you want the full boil to wind up at recipe volume. But if your OG is within range with the added volume it'd be fine technically.
I have a gas stove and I can get a full 5gal batch boiling (which is usually 6.5gal Im guessing at the start of the boil). I straddle 2 burners which are at max. If I'm having trouble getting it rolling, ill halfway cover the pot with the lid.
Just try it out with water. Keep in mind it won't happen immediately. It will hold at 212 for a while before it gains enough thermal energy to actually boil. Then if you can maintain it with the lid off, you;re golden
i was actually able to maintain a pretty good boil for the whole time without the lid because i have a "power burner" which is basically just one burner bigger than the other 3.
that is why i was so confused with the volume i ended up with. the program i used might be wonky. i got it for free on google play, it's called "wort".
maybe this is a stupid question, but if my post boil volume is 4 gal. why did it predict volume into fermenter at 3 gal.? where is that other gallon going?
Hmm I'm not familiar with that program but you're saying you measured 4gal after boil and only got 3gal into the fermentor? Because usually there's maybe 1/2gal of trub for me in my kettle that my dip tube cant reach.
If its the program saying that, maybe it figures a 1gal loss over the transfer, which does seem high. I just use this site to design recipes. Its great because it has the most complete bank of sugars/grains I've come across, you can adjust efficiency, add custom ingredients, choose your yeast strain for attenuation...it even has a colored SRM predictor
https://brewgr.com/homebrew-recipe-calculator
But I stopped measuring the amount of water I put in a while ago. Very unscientific, but I just eye it based on how close to the top of the pot the water is. For larger grain bills, ill fill it less then add a bit more after sparging to make it up. I always end up with 4.75-5.5 gals so it works for me...
no, i had 4 gallons after boil, which is what that program predicted. but the program said i'd have 3 gallons in fermenter, meaning i would lose a full gallon from post boil to fermenter.
that's gotta be an error, right?
anyway thanks for the program recommendation. i will try that one next time.
Yeah, well if its not an "error" its definitely "wrong"
Try designing a 5 gal (post boil) recipe and see if its spits out 4 gals into the fermentor. If it does, I'd find another program that uses better loss estimations
Try designing a 5 gal (post boil) recipe and see if its spits out 4 gals into the fermentor. If it does, I'd find another program that uses better loss estimations
normonster
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Not an error. There must be a spot where you can tell it how much you lose to cooling shrinkage, trub and transfer lines.
I brew in 15 gallon morebeer kettles and I lose .5 gallons in the kettle just cuz the valve doesn't get to the bottom (mist of that full of trub anyway) then another .5 gallon at least due to the hoses and my therminator chiller, plus the loss from shrinkage. I also lose another .5 gallon to each of my conical fermenter/yeast/hops....so for me to get 10 gallons in the kegs I have to hit a post boil volume of at least 12 gallons.
This is tough with a 90 boil where 1.25-1.5 gallon per hour is floating away. Nothing more scary than a 14.5 gallon boil going down in a 15 gallon kettle!!!!
