beersmith says to add water to reach my post boil volume but i never have..shoukd I? This last batch i did was a 90 min IPA and it was 1/2 gallon short...
boiled off too much wort!!!
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GMesick
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I generally try and hit my specific gravity target rather than a volume target. So if I have boiled off so much liquid that my SG is now too high for my target style, then I would add water to dilute it. And, conversely, if I missed my target (low efficiency), then I might adjust by boiling longer to distill the wort to hit my target. You have all the fermentable sugars you are going to get. How much liquid do you want to dissolve them in?
I do the same. If I hit my OG, no matter what the volume is, I let it be. If I overshoot my OG, I add water to get to my OG. The reason is simple- my whole recipe is balanced for a certain OG. The IBU/SG ratio is what I'm mostly looking at.
Now, if I miss my OG by 6 points, I don't sweat it. But if I boil off too much (very low humidity right now!), and I'm too high on my OG, I add water to get to the correct OG.
Now, if I miss my OG by 6 points, I don't sweat it. But if I boil off too much (very low humidity right now!), and I'm too high on my OG, I add water to get to the correct OG.
OP
OP
Thanks, that makes sense now...every time I've came up short on volume my OG has been a lil high.
I have just started full grain. Wondering if recirculating the sparge water thru the mash over a 40 minute period is ok or should I just sparge and let the water run through once. I was thinking recirculating should clear the wort better and extract more sugar. Comments please
Prymal
Well-Known Member
svalliant said:
Wow way to try and high jack a thread. Why not start a new thread with your question as it doesn't seem to relate to this topic.
Won't the water addition change the bitterness profile? According to BeerSmith it dilutes the recipe as a whole - or that's the result from how I'm trying to use it. The new version is very confusing on doing these top off's.
I brewed an Oktoberfest Lager yesterday that should have come in at 1.051 and read 1.078. I couldn't figure out just how much to add - is it trial and error - add re-measure, etc. or is it more exact?
You CAN top off, why do you think beersmith and all the other software have a DILLUTION CALCULATOR to begin with.
You should have topped it off immediately when you discovered you overshot your volume. It happens all the time. When you calculate your gravity of your current volume and you then use the dillution tool in beersmith to calculate the gravity after toppiing it off with the amount of water you are missing, you almost always come back to what the original gravity should be. I've topped off when necessary and the beer indeed has turned out fine.
Your beer is exactly stronger by the amount of water you are missing, same if you have to high a volume of water, your beer is exactly weekend by the amount of water you over shot. You can fix that by boiling further to concentrate the wort.
It's the magic of brewing. Volume and gravity are dependent on each other. It's easy to correct it....
You should have topped it off immediately when you discovered you overshot your volume. It happens all the time. When you calculate your gravity of your current volume and you then use the dillution tool in beersmith to calculate the gravity after toppiing it off with the amount of water you are missing, you almost always come back to what the original gravity should be. I've topped off when necessary and the beer indeed has turned out fine.
Your beer is exactly stronger by the amount of water you are missing, same if you have to high a volume of water, your beer is exactly weekend by the amount of water you over shot. You can fix that by boiling further to concentrate the wort.
It's the magic of brewing. Volume and gravity are dependent on each other. It's easy to correct it....
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That's not too bad being off by a half gallon. Wait until you do a test batch and scale your boil off rather than treat it as a constant and get a 6 pack from what should be much more.
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Without getting into minutia, does it affect IBUs very much?
The IBU's are calculated based on gravity and volume so if you are significantly off on either of those the IBU value will change, you would have to be off by quite a bit for it to have a significant enough impact to differentiate.
Yeah I missed the dilution tool - very simple in hindsight. I was trying to see the addition as a part of the recipe - i.e. add water. When I add the water there, no changes happen to the Gravity measures - or any measures - they all just twitch! I saw some unanswered posts on this on the BS forums for the 2.1 version, so just guessed from there.
Thanks for the well deserved slap upside the head Rev...
THe affect in IBU's WOULD be minutia...or minute.
Remember, although we might be able to differentiate vast differences in ibus, like maybe a 10-20 point difference (depending on our palate) very few folks can ACTUALLY detect a small difference in ibus. The kind that would be affected by this.
People always want to worry about it when this topic comes up, but in reality I bet I could set two different beers down, one where the boil landed perfectly, and one where we topped, and probably noone would notice.
I've even posted repeatedly, like here, how I and others often do five gallon batches from concentrated stove top all grain boils where using the dillution tool, and a little extra hops to top off from 2.5 gallons to 5 gallons just like extract batches.
