Brew day potholes

[prrriiide]

I did a 5 gal IPA yesterday, and it went very smoothly...my easiest brew day yet!

But...two problems:

1) I lost my hose braid in the bottom of the tun during my sparge. So of course it stuck. I had used a plastic zip wire tie as a clamp, and that didn't hold. My only choice was to line a spare pot with a mesh bag and dump it in and strain out the grains. As you can imagine, the wort is cloudy as hell. But I've had really cloudy IPAs before that were really good, so I'm not too worried there. But does anyone have a suggestion for a clamp? I can use a stainless worm-drive clamp, but I don't want to get a bunch of caked-on nastiness on it. Maybe a spring clamp?

2) My O.G. came out 21 points low (projected at 1.064, measured 1.043). I followed the BeerSmith mash schedule, and I wound up with right at 6.5 gallons for the boil. Boiled vigorously for an hour and still had 5.75 gallons at the end, so my boil-off rate wasn't as much as projected (and less than usual). Is 3 quarts enough to drop the OG by 21 points?

 

[jiggs_casey]

I use the stainless worm drive type clamps and haven't had any issue with them. As far as getting them messy, well, everything's pretty much mess at the end of a brewday anyway...

 

[MikeYoung]

2) My O.G. came out 21 points low (projected at 1.064, measured 1.043). I followed the BeerSmith mash schedule, and I wound up with right at 6.5 gallons for the boil. Boiled vigorously for an hour and still had 5.75 gallons at the end, so my boil-off rate wasn't as much as projected (and less than usual). Is 3 quarts enough to drop the OG by 21 points?

Boiling off 3 qts more would give 5 gallons of 1.048.

Weight of 5.75 gal at 1.043 = 49.7 lbs.
Weight of 0.75 gal at 1.000 = 6.2 lbs
Weight of 5 gal post boil = (49.7 - 6.2) = 43.5 lbs
Weight of 1 gal post boil = 43.5 lb / 5 gal = 8.7 lbs
Specific gravity = 8.7 lb/gal / 8.3 lb/gal = 1.048

The BeerSmith boil-off rate is an estimate you entered in the equipment profile. It is NOT a prediction (although it shouldn't be too horribly difficult to extend BeerSmith to calculate it from a calibration boil).

My 20 year old kitchen stove manages only 7k BTU/hr on its largest burner. My 5 gal kettle loses about 3k BTU to the air, leaving about 4k BTU going into the boil. Each lb of wort has a latent heat of about 1k BTU. IOW, it takes about 1k BTU to boil off 1 lb of water from the wort. 4k BTU/hr into 212 deg wort converts about 4 lbs of wort to steam every hour. Brewing in my kitchen, then, I can boil off somewhat less than 1/2 gal per hour. (It sure would be handy for BeerSmith to figure this out for me.)

In any case, if your burner is large enough, dial the flame up or down to hit your estimated boil rates. Since my burner is very limited, I take excruciating care to hit pre-boil volumes so I won't be forced to extend the boil time.

 

[PurpleJeepXJ]

Stainless worm drive but make sure it is stainless and not the crap from the box stores.

 

[November]

I use 3 zip ties and haven't had a problem. I used them at first because I didn't have any clamps but now I just haven't thought to replace them.