wort is never 5.5

[lostforatime]

I have done 5 allgrain batches and each one is never close to 5.5 after the boil. I am using the calculations from promash, any ideas? the last batch was so short(3 1/2 gallons) that I made up a 1 1/2 gallon batch and added to the fermentior. any help would be great.

 

[Reverend JC]

I ignore the calculations and go with what i feel. For example, when it is 10 degrees outside i know i will likely boil off about 1.5 gallons in an hour, if it is in the 40s or above in 60 min i can boil off 3 gallons.

 

[Waldo]

You have to know your boil off rate and adjust accordingly. If I do a 90 minute boil and want to end up with 5.5 gallons when done I need to start with 7.5 gallons in the pot. I'll boil off 1.75 gallons and lose another .25 gallons when cooled for a total of 2 gallons loss I end up with 5.5 gallons.

 

[Pumbaa]

you can also do what I do and say screw it and put in a sight glass and eyeball it . . . figure out about how fast your boiling off and then add hops accordingly

 

[Brewsmith]

Trial and error. Ther are so many factor that go into the boil off rate. Burner power, pot dimentions, pot material, temperature and relative humidity outside... Those calculations can't account for everything. I've figured that I can do about 2 gallons in an hour. If I begin with about 7.5 gallons, it comes out right.

 

[cweston]

Also--purists may cringe here, but...

There's absolutely nothing wrong with topping off if you need to. If you calculated for 5.5 gals at 1.050, say, and actually boiled down to 4.5, then your gravity is going to be more like 1.061. (You're not boiling off sugars, you're boiling off water).

So I say go ahead and top off to your target volume.

It's very hard to calculate exactly, as other's have mentioned. I usually figure better to undershoot your volume (and maybe have to top off a little) than to overshoot it and have to boil longer (which will screw up your hops times if you don't realize it until the end of the boil.)

 

[Ó Flannagáin]

I had 3.75 gals after my AG weizen was done with its boil. It's gravity was way high.. can't remember, but somewhere around 1.075ish... I just added some boiled water and brought it up to 5 gals... was around 1.056 when done.

 

[Bugeaterbrewing]

I just finished brewing a 1.111 OG barleywine. In order to get as much of the sugar out of the mash as possible I ended up collecting 9 gallons of wort. I did a 3 hour boil to get it down to my 5.5 gallons to go into the fermenter. You just need to figure out your boiloff rate and work backwards to figure out how much wort you need to start with at the begining of the boil. A mistake a lot of folks make on this computation is that they try using a % per hour hour rather than a volume per hour. You percentage per hour will vary according to the initial volume of wort. The volume per hour will always remain the same for a particular pot.

Wayne
Bugeater Brewing Company

 

[Waldo]

Its very easy to calculate your boil off rate, humidity, air temp and barometeric pressure all have an effect but not as much as you would think unless you get into extremes. I rarely miss my target if I do its by less than a quart. Once you know your boil off rates plug them into promash and it will give you the proper data.

 

[alemonkey]

Hell yeah, top it off if you boil down too much. I have a dip stick marked with 1 gallon intervals, so it's easy to determine how much is in my kettle. If I boil off too much I just ad a little preboiled water to get it back up to the target volume.

 

[jayhoz]

Wouldn't the ideal scenario be to maintain as constant a boil volume as possible? If you boiled off too much and went below your target volume during the boil wouldn't it be better to add boiling water to maintain the volume rather than top up in the primary? Wouldn't a low boil volume effect IBU's and color?

 

[Sir Humpsalot]

Here's what I did on my first and second AG batch (done from the same grains, English Batch Sparge Style). I nuke half gallons of water for about 4 minutes and add as much as necessary to my wort to keep the volume up. The result was 13 pounds of grain and 6 gallons of hot liquor boiled down with water added yielded me 5 gallons at an OG of 1.055

For the second runnings, pulled out an additional 4 gallons with an OG of 1.016. So that was more of an Partial Mash- I threw in 6 lbs of gold LME to make up the difference.

 

[boo boo]

Too hard a boil and you get the Maillard effect. A good rolling boil is all that's nesessary.

 

[Sir Humpsalot]

Too hard a boil and you get the Maillard effect. A good rolling boil is all that's nesessary.

The Duck Effect? What's that?

 

[rod]

originally posted by barleypopmaker:
5. Colourization:
Sometimes called caramelization, this refers to the Maillard reaction that goes on during boiling. A chemical reaction between sugars and amino acids, each brought out in the mashing process, occurs through the introduction of heat (boiling). The result is a darkening of the colour of the wort. This can be increased by prolonged boiling

edit - doh!! took me a day but i finally realized what toot meant by the "duck" effect.
plse excuse my brain fart

 

[constrc]

There is a great article by Ray Daniels posted at the All About Beer web site which explains the "formula" to determine the amount of water needed for brewing.
Here's the link: www.allaboutbeer.com/homebrew/water.html

 

[Llarian]

One thing I have noticed makes a HUGE difference is wind. The extra airflow over the boil causes substantially higher evaporation.

Given my relativly exposed brewery (front porch), I'm typically at about 7.9 gallons into the boil for 5.5G into the primary. (90 minute boil)

Just do a few batches and see what you end up with, and adjust your sparge from there.

-Dylan