Boil it more? Reboil or Pitch?

[shmEk]

Conserved more water during the boil then I expected and my Gravity is lower then I wanted. Can I reboil it without ruining it? Please comment if you would reboil your batch or just go with it as it is.

OG target was: 1.101
OG actual: 1.085

Am ready to pitch (WLP007), but considering throwing it all back in the BK and boiling off the extra water that is in it. I do have about 6 gallons wort instead of the 5 I was expecting. Looks like all the keeping of the lid on at various times helped too much.

Thanks for comments to help the noob in me grow wiser

 

[Hoppylikerabbits]

IMO you never want to keep the lid on the kettle during the boil. there is an off flavor that is produced when you do this. i forget the name of it. Depending on the beer your gonna lose some of the final volume that you will be able to bottle or keg due to the Trub. Correct me if im wrong.. but if you boil it again your gonna change the beer by more hops utilization. I would just pitch and go with the flow.

 

[cshamilton]

Really depends on the style - I'd probably just pitch - especially if there are a lot of 0 - 30 min hops.

If you really wanted to get your gravity up you could add some DME to a gallon of your wort and boil it for 10 min - if you don't have any DME, you could take 2 gallons and boil the heck out of it (less impact on your hops this way and easier to boil off).

Sent from my iPad using HB Talk

 

[shmEk]

Thanks for the comments. Ya, I figure it would totally wipe out the hops and there were quite a bit. ~97IBU. I wanted the alcohol up to work with them. I'm leaning toward pitching.

I had the lid on during the boil for about 2 mins on a 90 min boil and agree not for keeping the lid on. I used a step mash and figured some water would be going on through some temp raises. Lesson learned and gonna have to rebrew it to hit the higher ABV next time.

 

[z987k]

IMO you never want to keep the lid on the kettle during the boil. there is an off flavor that is produced when you do this. i forget the name of it. Depending on the beer your gonna lose some of the final volume that you will be able to bottle or keg due to the Trub. Correct me if im wrong.. but if you boil it again your gonna change the beer by more hops utilization. I would just pitch and go with the flow.

Dimethyl sulfide

As far as being off on gravity yet a gallon high. That is why. You needed to boil off more water. Figure out the amount you boil off in an hour. Then if you collect 7 gallons, you know how long the total boil must be to hit 5. If you only get to 6, well then you will miss your OG by a lot.

 

[ChillWill]

Having a lower gravity will have also got more utilisation out of your hops so it'll have more bitterness than 97ibu you planned for. Adding dme will add some more residual sweetness to balance it. Just take enough wort off to boil it for 15 min in.