Boil off rate

[hopsalot]

Does anybody know an equation for the evaporation of water during boil? I have been using about 6 gallons of water thinking there was a bunch of evaporation, my beer has been tasting a little week and it is been 1 primary, 2 secondary, and 3 in bottles(so its not "green"). It is a Rogue dead guy clone I just think I have been using too much water in my brews, and I did the same with my brown ale in bottles and my hefe in the primary. It doesn’t taste bad I am just a little disappointed. Any suggestions?

 

[carnevoodoo]

Does anybody know an equation for the evaporation of water during boil? I have been using about 6 gallons of water thinking there was a bunch of evaporation, my beer has been tasting a little week and it is been 1 primary, 2 secondary, and 3 in bottles(so its not "green"). It is a Rogue dead guy clone I just think I have been using too much water in my brews, and I did the same with my brown ale in bottles and my hefe in the primary. It doesn’t taste bad I am just a little disappointed. Any suggestions?

How much beer did you end up with? Evaporation rates vary greatly on the conditions you're brewing in, so there isn't a set amount of water loss. You really do have to calculate and adjust for that sort of thing.

Also, are you doing extract or all grain? There's a lot of technique that could be producing less than favorable results.

 

[the_bird]

What was your original gravity reading? How did that compare to what your expectations were for the batch?

There are a ton of possibilities for why the beer seems underwhelming, starting with the recipe. Boiling off too little water is unlikely the cause. How much wort made its way into the fermenter?

 

[hopsalot]

My practices are not the best i take good notes but obvioulsy I need to mark the 5 gallon mark and graduate from there on my carboys, next time I will think it all the way through before I cry about it. At the time I was waiting for a hydrometer to come in the mail due to my old one reading 70d water at .9, Good news though on my hefe I hit the gravity on the dot 1.050.

 

[Moonpile]

hopsalot: are you doing a concentrated boil and then diluting to the intended OG? I wasn't entirely clear from your original post.

Rather than relying on a fixed finished volume, you should take a gravity reading of the concentrated wort then figure out how much water you need to add to dilute it to the intended OG. Brewing software like ProMash makes this easy.

End Volume=Beg Volume * Beg Gravity / End Gravity (which I remembered seeing here).