What went wrong with my brew?

[Sash]

I tried brewing a Bell's Two Hearted IPA clone from Brew365. (2nd time brewing this recipe, first time made an awesome beer!)

http://brew365.com/beer_two_hearted.php

I brew indoors with an electric keggle. (5500W element & PID Controller)

Since the heating element is set a little high on the keggle, I tried making a larger amount of beer to keep the element covered.

Recipe is 5.5 Gal. I made a 7 Gal version by raising everything by 1.25.

Grain bill x1.25
Hops x1.25.

Mash temps hit perfectly then I got 8Gal of Wort which I brewed for 60 minutes. Assume loss of 1Gal per hour of boiling.

End result came in at 6Gal instead of 7Gal with a OG of 1.078 instead of 1.064.

How the heck did it get so high with so little left at the end? Should I add some water (boiled and cooled) to lower the gravity?

Any advise as to why this happened?

This is my 5th batch with this setup...Volumes are a little less than expected but the OG is usually close.

 

[earwig]

It's hard to say what happened, everything you typed is very straight forward. Apparently you boiled off more than usual. If you want to get it to the proper volume add some spring water or boiled/cooled water - that's up to you.

 

[brew_ny]

If you want to get it to the proper volume add some spring water or boiled/cooled water

and then your OG will be right or real close to right ( I am lazy too do the math )

S_M

 

[brettg20]

Or turn it into a IIPA

 

[LovesIPA]

Assume loss of 1Gal per hour of boiling.

There's your problem. Is this your first batch on new equipment? If you don't know what your boil-off rate is, then you should boil some water off and time it to figure it out.

Or turn it into a IIPA

This works just about never. Rarely can you ever turn one beer into a different beer after the boil is done.

 

[ny101]

I vote to add water to dilute. Make sure you use one of those "top off water" calculators out there to get the right volune of water for your target gravity. If you don't you risk throwing your hops/bu ratio way out of whack.

In the future, with all-grain, always check your SG, and adjust before adding it to the fermenter. It's normally called "top off water", and it's legit.

I know for me, my boil off rate varies greatly from brew to brew. With the dry winter air up here I boil off nearly 50% more water then I do on a humid summer day. As you get more experience, you should be able to come closer to your target volumes, but it will still vary from time to time.

 

[pdxal]

If you add water it might end up the right gravity, but the hop utilization will be off because of the higher gravity boil. You might need to adjust hopping.