Evaporating wort down to the right volume...

[Evan!]

Alright, the stout that I brewed yesterday morning was my 3rd AG batch. 78% efficiency, not too bad. My question is this:

I batch sparge, and so what am I supposed to do when, like yesterday, my second (sparge) runnings are still @ 1.030? I mean, mashed with 6 gallons, then sparged with 3, then sparged again with another 1 after I saw how high my runnings OG was. So 10 gallons there. You lose some to the grains, yeah, but I still ended up having to boil two separate kettles (my biggest kettle is 8 gals) and combining them at the end. I also ended up having to do like a 90-minute boil in order to evaporate enough water to end up with 5 gals in the primary.

So, outside of the seemingly wasteful tactic of 90-minute+ boils, or fly sparging, what else is there to do when it comes to high-grav AG homebrewing? Or should I just plan on pre-boiling the wort, sans-hops, before I even start the boil timer?

 

[david_42]

Doing a boil-down is just part of high-gravity all grain. 90 minutes isn't unreasonable and the hop utilization difference is small.

The other alternative is making a small beer out of the extra runnings.

 

[Evan!]

Doing a boil-down is just part of high-gravity all grain. 90 minutes isn't unreasonable and the hop utilization difference is small.

The other alternative is making a small beer out of the extra runnings.

Cool...yeah, I just wasn't sure if this was standard operating procedure, as my previous two AG's weren't that high-grav. I don't have a problem with it, just wasn't sure...

 

[jcarson83]

You should feel lucky, I'm averaging about two hour boils. I don't add my hops in until the last hour though. The rivets on my brew pot are a pretty good indicator of when to start the timer for the last hour. I wouldn't worry if your gravity of the runnings is a little high on your last sparge, it just means your wasting a little sugar and you probably could have gotten your efficiency a little higher.

 

[Evan!]

You should feel lucky, I'm averaging about two hour boils. I don't add my hops in until the last hour though. The rivets on my brew pot are a pretty good indicator of when to start the timer for the last hour. I wouldn't worry if your gravity of the runnings is a little high on your last sparge, it just means your wasting a little sugar and you probably could have gotten your efficiency a little higher.

Yeah...I know, I could have forgone that last gallon of sparging, but I really wanted to scrounge those sugars. I always hate wasting them. I spent alot of time and energy getting them to that point, and I like to get as much as I can. I guess someday I'll have to giddyap on the whole fly sparge bandwagon.

Yeah, I think mine was prolly closer to 2 hours too, I just stopped the timer and let the boil go, then restarted it. So who knows. I just estimated...and I scratched a line in my kettle so I knew when I'd get to 5 gals.