Boil off .. Just did a 5 gallon batch ... Ended up with 1 gallon of concentrated wort

[jph2275]

Hey HBT,

I have consistently made a mistake every time I brew it seems. Time for an itinerary to be drawn up ... Anyway

My latest blunder was about 2 hours ago, I boiled a orange creamsickle ale from AHS. Sort of like a dessert beer, starts with an orange flavor and finishes with a vanilla flavor ...

I started a 2.5 gallon boil and steeped my grains, then was supposed to add an additional gallon of water, bring wort to boil, add malt, hops, etc..

Well ... I forgot the extra gallon! My wort was very syrupy and concentrated. I was able to still get about 90-95% of it into my carboy. It filled up to about the gallon line. My hops bags were so sticky with syrupy wort.

I added about 4 gallons of water and pitched my yeast anyway ...


Will my beer be ok? Will the concentrated syrupy like wort take that 4 gallons of water and be ok?

Respectfully,

Patrick

 

[MarkInBuffalo]

Did you take a gravity reading? If the gravity of the one gallon of concentrated wort was high enough you will be okay, but chances are diluting with four gallons will leave you with an extremely low gravity beer.

 

[jph2275]

No I didn't ... Just hoped for the best and stuck the carboy in my closet. No activity in carboy yet ..

 

[MarkInBuffalo]

How much malt extract did you use? I would just ride it out and see what you end up with. RDWHAHB

 

[Pratzie]

if u added the yeast, i really don't think there's anyway to recover this. if its syrupy, which u def don't want, u concentrated the wort. Judging by what ur saying its 4X's as much as u should have. ur OG on that is prob 1.2 or something ridiculously close. U could try adding 4 more gallons of water and either stirring or shaking the hell out of it. but im sorry to say i don't know if u can salvage it.

 

[jph2275]

Thanks ... I hope so

I used 5 lb extra pale extract

And

1 lb lactose sugar

 

[jph2275]

if u added the yeast, i really don't think there's anyway to recover this. if its syrupy, which u def don't want, u concentrated the wort. Judging by what ur saying its 4X's as much as u should have. ur OG on that is prob 1.2 or something ridiculously close. U could try adding 4 more gallons of water and either stirring or shaking the hell out of it. but im sorry to say i don't know if u can salvage it.

crap

I vigorously shook the 4 gallons with the concentrated wort and it seemed to mix completely together ... Then I added the yeast

 

[Pratzie]

let it sit for a bit, see if anything settled. then shake it like crazy again. That MIGHT do it.

 

[woozy]

Everything is fine.

Did you take a gravity reading? If the gravity of the one gallon of concentrated wort was high enough you will be okay, but chances are diluting with four gallons will leave you with an extremely low gravity beer.

Doesn't matter. S/He added the right the right amount of ingredients except water but then topped off to the correct amount. The O.G. will be fine and *exactly* (not "probably will be" but *definitely* will be) what it should be (unless the OP made ingredient errors s/he isn't telling us about).

[gravity is determined by the amount of sugar and water. Boiling away to a syrup doesn't change the amount of sugar. And as for water it doesn't matter if you boil it all away and re-add it, dilute it cool-aid and then boil it back down, or put the right amount from the start. If you end up with 5 gallons you end up with 5 gallons. Thus O.G. once you get you sugars and have a specific amount of target water in the end, your O.G. *has* to be a specific amount no matter what road you take to get there.]

if u added the yeast, i really don't think there's anyway to recover this.

The OP clearly states s/he topped off to 5 gallons.

U could try adding 4 more gallons of water and either stirring or shaking the hell out of it.

The OP *did* do that (and said so from the very beginning).

The only thing that might go wrong but probably won't is over-carmelizing and/or scorching and hop utilization. You beer will *probably* come out darker than intended (I had a blonde ale come out a deep amber color once) and *might* (but probably won't) have more caramel flavor than intended.

But for the most part everything is fine. Doing a partial boil everything is supposed to concentrate anyway and yours just concentrated quite a bit more. It's *not* a problem.

 

[kh54s10]

The only thing that might go wrong but probably won't is over-carmelizing and/or scorching and hop utilization. You beer will *probably* come out darker than intended (I had a blonde ale come out a deep amber color once) and *might* (but probably won't) have more caramel flavor than intended.

But for the most part everything is fine. Doing a partial boil everything is supposed to concentrate anyway and yours just concentrated quite a bit more. It's *not* a problem.

I agree with this.

 

[MarkInBuffalo]

I misread the OP. Too many homebrews.

 

[DocScott]

Woozy has it right. You added the correct amount of sugars and water and that's all that matters to hit gravity. The time they are added doesn't. The only difficulty your mistake made was a more viscous transfer to the primary, and probably tougher clean up. You may have left a very small amount of fermentables on your boil equipment if you couldn't get the thick wort off completely, but that is negligible. You should be good to go.

 

[woozy]

Well, there is the business of hop utilization that I don't really understand (and thus I rather arrogantly assume is out of the ken and range of other newbies as well). Boiling your bittering hops in a lower volume of water yields fewer IBU (???I think????) A beer calculater can give the exact details.

Also I *think* cooking at a thick more viscous concentrate can "cook" the grain/extract to a darker color but I'm mostly speculating. I don't think it'll effect taste much but it *might* a little bit. But I'm still only speculating.

But as far as gravity and fermentation go, however, this is not an issue.

 

[unionrdr]

Well woozy,you got it basically right. I've had this happen a couple of times. The last time was with my hopped & confused light hybrid lager (as I call it). I did my mash & sparge,got the boil going did the bittering addition. Also being Fat Tuesday,I drank two 24oz'rs & a 5th of vodka. Passed out after that bittering addition for an hour & 45 minutes!
But since I do late extract additions,the beer was still light golden like a pilsner with a slight amber blush. The amount of wort that went into the Cooper's microbrew FV was about 10-11L. Topped off with chilled local spring water,pitched the WL029 starter & all turned out fine. OG/FG was 1.055/1.014,so there was a hair more long chain sugars produced in the extended boil,to my thinking.

 

[Pratzie]

The OP clearly states s/he topped off to 5 gallons.

The OP *did* do that (and said so from the very beginning).

The only thing that might go wrong but probably won't is over-carmelizing and/or scorching and hop utilization. You beer will *probably* come out darker than intended (I had a blonde ale come out a deep amber color once) and *might* (but probably won't) have more caramel flavor than intended.

But for the most part everything is fine. Doing a partial boil everything is supposed to concentrate anyway and yours just concentrated quite a bit more. It's *not* a problem.

Prior to my first comment, I missed the part where they said they topped off. However the rest doesn't address the main problem i was getting out (and should have stated more clearly)... the solubility of the sugars.

They stated it was syrupy and very thick. The problem here is the separation of the water he topped off with and the sugars of the wort. If he had thick sugary sludge on the bottom of the FV, water on top and some yeast floating around, that would be an issue. Getting all the sugars mixed back in with the water was what I was getting at. Its good that he shook the hell out of it and hopefully it mixed properly, but since sugar doesn't dissolve into water nearly as well if the water isn't warm. There still may be separation issues. This would lead to a watery, under attenuated brew.

 

[DocScott]

Prior to my first comment, I missed the part where they said they topped off. However the rest doesn't address the main problem i was getting out (and should have stated more clearly)... the solubility of the sugars.

They stated it was syrupy and very thick. The problem here is the separation of the water he topped off with and the sugars of the wort. If he had thick sugary sludge on the bottom of the FV, water on top and some yeast floating around, that would be an issue. Getting all the sugars mixed back in with the water was what I was getting at. Its good that he shook the hell out of it and hopefully it mixed properly, but since sugar doesn't dissolve into water nearly as well if the water isn't warm. There still may be separation issues. This would lead to a watery, under attenuated brew.

I disagree. I'm 10+ years removed from my chemical engineering years, but I'm confident that the turbulence from fermentation, and solubility of sugars in water will allow for adequate mixing of the sugars and water to let this ferment out to normal/expected terminal gravity. Rather than argue, I'd love to hear back from the op in 4-6 weeks though.

As woozy said, the beer will likely be darker in color and perhaps less hop utilization, but this "mistake" will not affect the abv or fermentability of this brew in my opinion.

 

[Pratzie]

I'd def like to hear back from him as well.

 

[jph2275]

I disagree. I'm 10+ years removed from my chemical engineering years, but I'm confident that the turbulence from fermentation, and solubility of sugars in water will allow for adequate mixing of the sugars and water to let this ferment out to normal/expected terminal gravity. Rather than argue, I'd love to hear back from the op in 4-6 weeks though.

As woozy said, the beer will likely be darker in color and perhaps less hop utilization, but this "mistake" will not affect the abv or fermentability of this brew in my opinion.

Well you are definitely right, the transfer to the carboy took a little longer and was more of a sticky mess at the end than other brews I've done. I noticed there was a slight darkening of color (just slightly, no scorching involved in any of the process) and you are probably correct about the hop utilization. My hop bags were a sticky mess I squeezed some of them out (not heavily though). All has gone well however, the beer started fermenting on schedule with a nice head of krausen. Everything seems ok.

I will absolutely get back to you fellas in a few weeks and let you know how it is going. Fingers crossed!

 

[jph2275]

Prior to my first comment, I missed the part where they said they topped off. However the rest doesn't address the main problem i was getting out (and should have stated more clearly)... the solubility of the sugars.

They stated it was syrupy and very thick. The problem here is the separation of the water he topped off with and the sugars of the wort. If he had thick sugary sludge on the bottom of the FV, water on top and some yeast floating around, that would be an issue. Getting all the sugars mixed back in with the water was what I was getting at. Its good that he shook the hell out of it and hopefully it mixed properly, but since sugar doesn't dissolve into water nearly as well if the water isn't warm. There still may be separation issues. This would lead to a watery, under attenuated brew.

Thank you for raising these points. I did indeed shake the crap out of the carboy after adding the 4 gallons of water. The water I used was the hottest the sink would spit out (gets scalding hot) so it was definitely not cold water. After I mixed it all up I added the yeast ...

I will definitely let ya'll know. I have hopes ... may be loss hoppy but that is ok since it is a dessert beer.

Thanks again, you all rock :rockin:

 

[jph2275]

Well woozy,you got it basically right. I've had this happen a couple of times. The last time was with my hopped & confused light hybrid lager (as I call it). I did my mash & sparge,got the boil going did the bittering addition. Also being Fat Tuesday,I drank two 24oz'rs & a 5th of vodka. Passed out after that bittering addition for an hour & 45 minutes!
But since I do late extract additions,the beer was still light golden like a pilsner with a slight amber blush. The amount of wort that went into the Cooper's microbrew FV was about 10-11L. Topped off with chilled local spring water,pitched the WL029 starter & all turned out fine. OG/FG was 1.055/1.014,so there was a hair more long chain sugars produced in the extended boil,to my thinking.

Thanks for adding this in. I have noticed that too many homebrews during brew time can cause a little forgetfulness for me. I haven't passed out yet but we'll see

Glad to hear yours still turned out well. Gives me hope.

 

[dgr]

I wouldn't worry about layering. If anyone has ever made mead, they yeast do a fine job of mixing the honey on the bottom into solution and turning it into alcohol.

 

[unionrdr]

I disagree. I'm 10+ years removed from my chemical engineering years, but I'm confident that the turbulence from fermentation, and solubility of sugars in water will allow for adequate mixing of the sugars and water to let this ferment out to normal/expected terminal gravity. Rather than argue, I'd love to hear back from the op in 4-6 weeks though.

As woozy said, the beer will likely be darker in color and perhaps less hop utilization, but this "mistake" will not affect the abv or fermentability of this brew in my opinion.

Damnit,I highlighted the pertinent part,& I still get the whole thing. Idk how y'all do that. Anyway,the darker color comes from maillard reactions & basically makes long chain sugars that the yeast can't break down to a small extent. You also get that cooked extract "twang".

 

[ong]

Thank you for raising these points. I did indeed shake the crap out of the carboy after adding the 4 gallons of water. The water I used was the hottest the sink would spit out (gets scalding hot) so it was definitely not cold water. After I mixed it all up I added the yeast ...

I will definitely let ya'll know. I have hopes ... may be loss hoppy but that is ok since it is a dessert beer.

Thanks again, you all rock :rockin:

So... You did let everything cool down before pitching the yeast, right?

 

[Pratzie]

Whats the OG and anticipated FG of the batch?