Please help

Homebrew Talk

Help Support Homebrew Talk:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

new2brew32

Active Member
Joined
Mar 8, 2012
Messages
28
Reaction score
1
Location
brigham
I overestimated my kettle's ability while boiling my grain for an extract kit with specialty grains. After sparging and adding my extract I only had about two inches of room to the top of my kettle. In order to prevent boil over I kept the heat down to 185 and slowly let it creep up to 200 where it was fully boiling. I am hoping that this is not a problem, but i have two weeks of fermenting before I can taste a sample. Does anyone have any thoughts on this.
 
You are probably OK. When I had an undersized kettle, I'd remove 2-3 quarts to make room for a full boil and extend the boil to 90 minutes. I'd add the wort I removed as boil-off progressed and everything was OK.
 
It really doesn't matter how long it takes you to get to a boil. Once you get there, you just need to make sure you maintain a boil for 60 minutes.
 
If you got it up to boiling for the appropriate amount of time it should be fine. I would recommend being careful with hops additions if you are still in the middle of the batch though as they can cause foam ups. My all grain batches done inside always get slowly raised to boiling because my stove doesn't like that much volume.

Oh yeah...Welcome to the forum.

:mug:
 
First of all, did you actually boil your grains, or did you steep them in hot water? If you actually boiled your grains then that could leave to some bad flavors (tannins).

Bringing up the wort to a boil slowly is not a problem, if that was your concern,. You need to be certain your extract is fully dissolved so it won't burn on the bottom of the kettle. That is the big issue. As long as you got to a boil and at that point starting your timing for hops addition then all is well and good.
 
I steeped for 30 and then sparged. This is when I knew i was in trouble. I appreciate the feedback and now have a little more confidence thank you. BTW after cleanup I purchased a much larger kettle.
 
Back
Top