13 points low on my barleywine OG

[Gixxer]

Brewed a barleywine today. Could not stick the spurs to it during the end of the boil cause of foam. This in turn caused me to have two quarts too much wort and in turn missed my estimated OG. The batch was 1.5gl so 2 quarts matters in this case. I should have come closer to my OG if the boil rate was not an issue. I hit my pre boil grav and volume so... I need to come up with a way to control the foam at the end of the boil. I recall reading about a guy that had a fan pointed at the top of his kettle to help with foam. Isn't there a brewing additive to add at the beginning of the boil to control foam too?

In the end, I will have a barleywine. Not quite to the recipe, but it will be beer. Just want to adjust my process so I can stay spot on with this recipe.

And I did use beersmith to come up with my volume and gravity estimates.

 

[GilSwillBasementBrews]

I believe it's fermcap or something similar to that to keep the foam down. I haven't tried it but I usually just keep a spray bottle handy and spray the foam down with that when it starts getting too high in the pot.

 

[Qhrumphf]

Never used Fermcap either, and I also use the spray bottle. A friend of mine uses ice cubes, and it seems to work just as well.

 

[jhall4]

I don't think an overly vigorous boil is really desirable anyway. I'd do what I could to bring the pre-boil volume down - increase your grain bill, add extract, etc. and/or increase your boil time. Just add the extra time to the beginning of your hop schedule and add them as you would have before.

Should fix you right up!

 

[Gixxer]

All, thanks for the pointers. Adjusting the boil rate can make life easier and boil longer if I have to.