Hi all
I'm a BIAB brewer. While I thought I was starting to get this brewing lark waxed, there is one area where I still struggle... hitting my OG.
While I'm always very close to the preboil gravity, I cannot for the life of me get consistently close to my OG. The last brew I did, I was aiming for 1.070 and I was 12 points off. Now the only thing I can ascribe this to is the wrong predicted boil off rate that I had plugged into Beersmith.
No what confuses me is I tested two boils, just using water so I could get some idea of boil off with my new 28l electric kettle. What I got there was around 4 litres per hour which seems about normal. But the calculated boil off I got based on the difference between SG and OG was 2.6litres / hour, which was a little less than the actual boil off at 3litres.
My questions are:
What am I doing wrong? My environment where I did my tests were little different from my actual last brew? Or does wort show a different boil off to water? Surely not?
What other factors am I missing?
If boil off's are so variable, which one to plug into Beersmith? My thinking is I should probably use the LEAST amount of boil off likely in my kettle, because then I can just add more water if the boil-off is excessive. In my mind, too little boil off is harder to correct because of the problems with the hop additions, and the only option then open to me is the addition of DME.
Your advise would be appreciated. Thanks
I'm a BIAB brewer. While I thought I was starting to get this brewing lark waxed, there is one area where I still struggle... hitting my OG.
While I'm always very close to the preboil gravity, I cannot for the life of me get consistently close to my OG. The last brew I did, I was aiming for 1.070 and I was 12 points off. Now the only thing I can ascribe this to is the wrong predicted boil off rate that I had plugged into Beersmith.
No what confuses me is I tested two boils, just using water so I could get some idea of boil off with my new 28l electric kettle. What I got there was around 4 litres per hour which seems about normal. But the calculated boil off I got based on the difference between SG and OG was 2.6litres / hour, which was a little less than the actual boil off at 3litres.
My questions are:
What am I doing wrong? My environment where I did my tests were little different from my actual last brew? Or does wort show a different boil off to water? Surely not?
What other factors am I missing?
If boil off's are so variable, which one to plug into Beersmith? My thinking is I should probably use the LEAST amount of boil off likely in my kettle, because then I can just add more water if the boil-off is excessive. In my mind, too little boil off is harder to correct because of the problems with the hop additions, and the only option then open to me is the addition of DME.
Your advise would be appreciated. Thanks