Used Too Little Sparge Water

[Pancoastbrewing]

I brewed an all grain Maibock yesterday with mostly German Pils malt. I read online that a 90 minute boil (never did one before) is a good idea to drive off DMS from the pils, so I decided to do it. One problem: I forgot to change my boil length time on the recipe software so I ended up using about .60 gal too little sparge water. I did add maybe a pint or two of water during mashing to adjust temp so I wasn't THAT far off and I did actually end up with plenty of wort to go in my fermenter (it was a 3 gal batch).

My question is, what will the results be of boiling for 90 minutes with a less than ideal wort amount going into the kettle? I probably put in about 4.75 gal when it should have been about 5.3 gal. I did a strong rolling boil throughout. Ended up with around 3.25 gal in the kettle post boil.

Thanks!

 

[McKnuckle]

If the recipe was designed for the amount of water you used, and the only thing you did was boil 50% longer, than you have a higher gravity beer with darker color and more concentrated flavor. Not looking like a bad thing from my perspective. Of course, if you had different evaporation and/or pre-boil gravity than anticipated, the difference might be moot. No big deal either way IMHO.

 

[Pancoastbrewing]

If the recipe was designed for the amount of water you used, and the only thing you did was boil 50% longer, than you have a higher gravity beer with darker color and more concentrated flavor. Not looking like a bad thing from my perspective. Of course, if you had different evaporation and/or pre-boil gravity than anticipated, the difference might be moot. No big deal either way IMHO.

I was worried it might turn out higher gravity and stronger. It's already 7.2% abv with an SG of like 1.067. Hope it's not too strong.

 

[cubicleman]

In such situation, is it ok to add more water to the wort to bring it back up / closer to 5 gal. I assume the only effect is that it will dilute the strong wort bringing the SG back down to somewhere near the intended range and the color back to around intended color. Would there be any negative effects of doing so (assuming the added water was already boiled for at least 10 minutes)?

 

[McKnuckle]

Dilution reduces flavor, bitterness, and gravity/ABV. But in a case where all of those things are perhaps more than you bargained for, it can make sense - within reason of course (don't want to water down your beer by 50% for example).

I think for some of us there's a purist or even Zen mentality to minor miscalculations, and we prefer to leave things as they ended up. Of course that applies best to relatively small misses, not huge ones.

 

[Pancoastbrewing]

Dilution reduces flavor, bitterness, and gravity/ABV. But in a case where all of those things are perhaps more than you bargained for, it can make sense - within reason of course (don't want to water down your beer by 50% for example).

I think for some of us there's a purist or even Zen mentality to minor miscalculations, and we prefer to leave things as they ended up. Of course that applies best to relatively small misses, not huge ones.

Yeah, I wish I wouldn't let it bother me since it's probably not a huge deal, but 3 months of fermenting/lagering is an awful long time to wait and see how much of an affect it had. Not having a huge amount of storage space, glass carboys, or brew time, it's much more ideal (obviously) to have a brew day go as planned. Especially when it was such an easily preventable error. Oh well, I usually only make the same mistake once!

 

[MaryB]

I blew my sparge water calc on a batch by a gallon... Since I wanted a full batch I bit the bullet and opened a gallon of distilled and topped off 1/2 gallon in each fermenter. FG was down about 3 points all said and done, tasted the same as any other batch of that recipe. I could have let it be but I needed a full batch for a friends grand daughters college graduation. I changed her diapers, helped her study through high school and now that she has graduated as a LPN I donated the beer as a gift for her hard work. 11 gallon batch didn't last long then we were stuck drinking commercial beers! This was my first time brewing on my new brew rig so I had a lot of unknowns and needed beer in 14 days...

 

[MadJohnShaft]

I had a brew day this winter where my boil off got out of control "I guess if I ever wanted to know what happens if you do it this way I'm going to find out". Nothing wrong with the beer (just me).

 

[MagicRat]

I did something similar once but compensated by doing a half-ass fly sparge from the spray nozzle of the garden hose until I reached my desired boil volume. OG and FG ended up pretty much as projected and the beer turned out fine.

 

[AlphaPyro]

I did something similar once but compensated by doing a half-ass fly sparge from the spray nozzle of the garden hose until I reached my desired boil volume. OG and FG ended up pretty much as projected and the beer turned out fine.

This.

I've had a few instances where my pre-boil volume did not meet what I knew my system would evaporate. All else being equal I knew adding water to my pre-boil volume would not necessarily hurt my batch. It always came within .002 gravity points when I hit my post-boil volume.

The catch is ensuring you are getting your gravity points in, but I wouldn't fret over +-.005 points. Also, it never hurts to make more sparge water than you need to shore up your pre-boil as long as it isn't excessive.

I fly sparge, and I know over many batches on my setup my target pre-boil volume needs to be relatively exact in order to end up with my final volume over the boil time. Generally depends on the humidity and wind speed on brew day. I check my gravity pre-boil, post-boil, and final gravity and record it so I have targets in my head for the next batch and adjust from there.



"If anything goes south with your batch, make sure you drink it all and really soak in the lesson."

 

[bajaedition]

Did you adjust the hops for the greater utilization percentage of hops oils you will receive with the 90 minute boil over the 60 minute boil?