So the other night we made our third beer, which was our first all-grain. We got a 50 liter pot and a propane burner for the occasion. We decided to do BIAB since at the moment it's cheaper and easier than building a mash tun. The recipe was O Flannagain's stout, so we had 9.25 lbs of grain. I used two different calculators for water volume, one said to use 8.5 gallons and the other said 7.5. I decided to put 7.5 gallons into the pot, as I figured that would get us pretty much right on 5 gallons.
We had a problem from the beginning with the 5 gallon paint strainer bag not being nearly big enough (I didn't know we would be using a 50 liter pot when I bought a 5 gallon bag!) We made that work though by being creative, so after mashing and letting the bag drain and squeezing all the liquid out of it we still had close to the 7.5 gallons we started with. Then we boiled for an hour. We cooled it in 30-40 minutes by just leaving it outside and spraying the outside of the pot with a hose. It was below zero when we were brewing so it worked out pretty good. I was surprised that when we put it into the fermenter we only had about 4 gallons, maybe even a little less! How could we have boiled off 3.5 gallons?? The pot is more wide than it is tall, and it was also pretty cold outside. There was a lot of steam coming off the pot. Could these factors contribute to the high boil off rate? It was also at pretty much a full boil the entire time, once the hot break settled then I just it do its thing. Should I turn it down more and just let it simmer next time?
The OG of the 4 gallons was 1.056, and our target was 1.046 so I added water to the 5 gallon mark. The gravity is now 1.042. How significant is that differnece between our target gravity and our actual gravity? Will it be too diluted, or will it simply result in lower ABV? In any case it's fermenting away right now so we'll find out for sure in a few weeks.
Thanks
We had a problem from the beginning with the 5 gallon paint strainer bag not being nearly big enough (I didn't know we would be using a 50 liter pot when I bought a 5 gallon bag!) We made that work though by being creative, so after mashing and letting the bag drain and squeezing all the liquid out of it we still had close to the 7.5 gallons we started with. Then we boiled for an hour. We cooled it in 30-40 minutes by just leaving it outside and spraying the outside of the pot with a hose. It was below zero when we were brewing so it worked out pretty good. I was surprised that when we put it into the fermenter we only had about 4 gallons, maybe even a little less! How could we have boiled off 3.5 gallons?? The pot is more wide than it is tall, and it was also pretty cold outside. There was a lot of steam coming off the pot. Could these factors contribute to the high boil off rate? It was also at pretty much a full boil the entire time, once the hot break settled then I just it do its thing. Should I turn it down more and just let it simmer next time?
The OG of the 4 gallons was 1.056, and our target was 1.046 so I added water to the 5 gallon mark. The gravity is now 1.042. How significant is that differnece between our target gravity and our actual gravity? Will it be too diluted, or will it simply result in lower ABV? In any case it's fermenting away right now so we'll find out for sure in a few weeks.
Thanks