Anyone got an approximate evaporation rate for a 10 gallon Bayou Classic?

[8gallonalchemy]

Just got a 10 gallon Bayou Classic kettle and I'm trying to plan volumes. It seems a popular kettle, anyone got a rough evaporation rate for it?

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

0.7 to 0.8 gallons lost per hour of boil time would be my initial guess for a low to low/moderate boil rate. A more robust boil will drive off yet more water as steam.

 

[Vale71]

The evaporation rate for the kettle is exactly zero. Now if we knew what you will be heating it with we could try and answer your question meaningfully...

 

[mongoose33]

It depends on how vigorously you plan to boil the wort. When I did a vigorous boil in a 10-gallon kettle, I'd expect approximately a 1-gallon boil off per hour. Now that I'm doing more of a simmer, it's more like a half-gallon per hour.

If you're unsure, put some water in the kettle and boil for half an hour, see what you get for boil off, then multiply by 2.

 

[BrewerBrad82]

Fill the kettle with water and boil for an hour. See how much you lose.

Edit: I missed mongoose's last line above. Half hour boil works too if you do the multiplier.

 

[CascadesBrewer]

Hmmm...maybe I boil to hard. I have a 10 gal kettle (that is wider than most) and I use a propane burner. I plan for a 1 gal per hour boil off. If I need to gather more wort pre-boil to hit my gravity target I will turn up the boil to get 1.5 gal per hour.

If you don't want to test, you could plug in a low-ish value (say 0.7 gal/hr) then add water to hit your target volume and adjust your boil off rate moving forward based on that.

 

[RPh_Guy]

Hmmm...maybe I boil too hard.

8% per hour is a good target.

 

[kh54s10]

I have a 10 gallon pot and because I get sputtering and possible flame going out I boil fairly vigorously. It doesn't seem much more than most videos but my boil off rate is 2 gallons per hour.

 

[tellyho]

I have an 11 gal Bayou Classic with 5500 kW electric element. If I want to reduce volume at high boil, I can get rid of about a gallon in an hour. I'm thinking max boil with my electric element is more vigorous than max with flame.

If I'm just doing my regular hour boil, I only lose maybe .4 gal. Again, might differ from flame.