2 ga batch

Would you do a 2 ga batch golden ale in a 3.4 ga brewpot??

 

The boil off on a pot that size is probably only around 1/2 gallon. Should fit as a full boil if you're careful. If you're doing BIAB you will likely have to sparge a bit.

 

Using biab I do a 2.5G choc stout in a 4G kettle. It’s a little tight but it works. I do 2G pale ale with plenty of room. I would think your 2G in 3.4G pot will be tight but will work. My boil off in 4G kettle is approx .75G, so half a gallon as mentioned above sounds about right.

 

As your wort comes to the intial boil it will foam a lot. Stirring this foam down with a wire whisk will keep it from spilling over. Once the foam drops back into the wort you should be fine as long as you don't boil it too hard.

 

everyone talks about boil off time. I have had good batches and thin batches going by boil time.
The better way is to just check with a refracto. until you get to your number ,no???Most dont have one .. Isnt that always better than just timing it?. A nice hoppy golden ale that you want at
4.8 % abv....what
read on the refracto would you want at the boil??

 

So you're saying if you have crappy efficiency that batch just boil down to a smaller volume? No I would say that is not the best way, I want to know how much finished beer I will have. Plus you would have to adjust your hop additions if it was a significantly smaller batch. Better to dial in a decent efficiency so it is reproducible, then you can hit your numbers and predict your batch volume each time. It may take a few batches to dial in with good measurements but folks can help with that.

To answer your question to target a beer around 4.8% you'd want an OG in the 1.046-1.048 range post boil. If you are measuring pre boil you'd have to make sure it is a very well mixed sample which can be hard unless you're doing full volume mash. Then you would calculate how much volume you need to boil off to hit the target OG.

 

but you will boil a little longer to get your refracto reading right on,no?

 

Yes, because you will be boiling down volume to concentrate your wort. So let's say you wanted 5 gals of 1.048 wort. You miss your target by 10 gravity pts and have 5 gals of 1.038 wort. You will now have to boil down an entire gallon to get to your target. So not only have you had to boil for about an extra hour you also now have only 4 gals into your fermenter.

Do you at least have a hydrometer to take gravity readings? If you are having trouble hitting your numbers folks can help, but you need to detail your process and we need numbers - like gravity readings, exact volumes, process of mash and sparge, etc.