Overestimated evaporation

[BaldAssCat]

I did some searching and I think I know the answer but I wanted to be sure.

I made my first batch since the winter this weekend and the first full boil batch in the summer I’ve ever done. I used beersmith to figure out water volume. My mistake was I setup beersmith during the winter when I was boiling outside in the dry 20 degree weather and was losing 3 gallons an hour. Yesterday was 60 and humid just after a rain so 8 gallons only came down to 6.8 after 90 minutes. I ran out of time at that point so I cooled it off and put it in a 7 gal wine bucket.

So my question is if I reboil for as long as it takes to bring it under 6 gal and add some aroma hops, other than a darker color is there any downside? I would leave it as is but I don’t have anything big enough to ferment that much beer in without making a mess and I’d hate to dump anything down the drain.

 

[nebben]

Why not take a gallon of it and put it in a glass jug (like the apple juice jugs found at Whole Foods or Trader Joes) ? I believe that if you boil longer to evaporate more wort, any later addition hops left in your wort right now (if they weren't removed after the boil) will contribute to higher IBUs for your brew. So like if you had a 15 min addition and a 1 minute addition, they will add bitterness with more boiling time IIRC.

 

[beerkrump]

I don't see any real issues. Don't worry too much about the increased bitterness from you other hop additions. The increase in IBU's from a 60 min boil to a 120 min boil is almost negligible since a majority of your AA's have already been isomerized. Now, if you made any later additions, they would be more fully converted and end up as bittering hops.

3 gallons/hour is a HUGE boil off. Is that a perfect storm of big burner, large liquid surface area, and super low humidity?

 

[cvstrat]

Yeah 3gal/hour sounds realllly high. I have a relatively wide pot so the added surface area lends to faster than average evap, but still I can tweak the butane back a bit and keep it relatively under control.

I did an all day brews session a few weeks ago, by the night time we were so hammered that I mashed with like 8 or 9 gallons of water. Needless to say after our first running we had like 7.5 gallons of wort. We ended up bringing it to a raging boil for almost an hour to get it to 6, so that by the end of the normal hour boil we'd be at 5. Even with a wide-open boil we managed to get 1.5 gallons to evap in a little under an hour.

 

[BaldAssCat]

I don't see any real issues. Don't worry too much about the increased bitterness from you other hop additions. The increase in IBU's from a 60 min boil to a 120 min boil is almost negligible since a majority of your AA's have already been isomerized. Now, if you made any later additions, they would be more fully converted and end up as bittering hops.

3 gallons/hour is a HUGE boil off. Is that a perfect storm of big burner, large liquid surface area, and super low humidity?

I think it’s the super low humidity, the cold and I’m kind of up in the hills. I have a standard burner you'd get with a turkey fryer and a keggel nothing big.

I was reading here about 1.2 and 1.5 gal per hour while I was getting 3 and I figured I was doing something wrong but I couldn’t figure out what. I did 4 or 5 batches between Jan and March this winter and I was getting the same numbers every time so I just put those numbers in BS. Since then I’ve done only 1 batch a month ago and it was away from home and I wasn’t paying too much attention during the boil and let it go long. That came out a little over volume but I didn’t think much of it.

I’m going to boil some water to get a new baseline for the summer. I think it will be closer to 1.2 though.

I only had bittering hops at 60 min. Since my OG is low I think I’ll boil again. I did add lemon and grains of paradise at 20 minutes so I’m concerned about that. I may add more lemon at 20 minutes again, couldn’t hurt.

 

[beerkrump]

Yeah, I forgot altitude. It sounds like you've got a pretty good handle on the situation. Good luck and good brewing!

 

[BaldAssCat]

Thanks for the advice all. I'll let you know how it turns out.

 

[BaldAssCat]

Two lessons learned from reboiling.
1 – No noticeable issues, another hour didn’t hurt anything and my OG is up close to what I was looking for.
2 – Lemon flavor from lemon skin will not boil off so there isn’t any need to add more during the second boil. I learned this after adding more to the second boil.

I didn’t pitch the yeats yet since it was too warm so I was thinking I would add some candied sugar to dry it out a little since it’s really a hops flavored lemonade now. I never tasted the likes before but it’s pretty good. It’s far enough off the original recipe that I think I can call it its own creation. If it’s still good after fermentation I’ll post it.