Wort Volume

[Coreyolf1]

Hi,

I've been brewing a few recipes where it called to collect 6.25 gallons of wort pre-boil. After I'm done the 60 minute boil and chill it to 70F, I'm left with 4.5 gallons when the recipe says I should have 5.25 gallons.

My question is, will adding more volume pre-boil affect my OG? I'm assuming because I live in Canada that the cold of the winter is evaporating more of my wort than a warmer climate? If I lost a total of 1.75 gallons through boiling and chilling, should I prepare myself next time to collect more wort so that I end up with 5.25?

Any feedback is appreciated.

 

[mtyquinn]

I don't have a great answer for you but I would suggest some brewing software like beer smith or something to help track your boil off rates and adjust your recipe. If you collect more wort and then boil it down it will affect your original gravity.

 

[Pkrd]

Yes you need to tune your water volumes to match your boil off. And you need to tune your recipe to hit your OG.

 

[JimRausch]

It all depends on your OG. If your volume is lowish and your OG is highish, then add some topoff water. If you're happy with your OG, leave it alone.
Also, I always check my OG about 10 minutes before the end of the boil, and keep some DME on hand to adjust OG if needed.

 

[MagicMatt]

I have a boil-off rate of about 1.1 gallons/hour, and I have to collect 7 gallons to get a final volume of 5.5 into the fermentor. If your batch size was 5.25 gallons, then your pre-boil volume should likely be nearer to 6.75 gallons, possibly more if your boil off rate is higher.

Also, how are you measuring your pre-boil volume? You may *think* that you collected 6.25 gallons as per the recipe, but perhaps your measurements were off. Don't trust any markings pre-stamped on your kettle, as those are notoriously inaccurate.

 

[mattdee1]

Your mash/lauter/sparge process will allow you to collect a certain amount of sugars from the tun. The OG will be directly affected by the amount of water that is mixed with those sugars. Put another way, let's say you do two identical mashes and put the identical wort in two different kettles and boil one for 60min and the other for 90min. Both kettles have the same amount of sugars in them, but the 90min boil will result in a lower final volume (due to increased boil-off) and therefore higher OG.

One of the great things about homebrewing is you aren't tightly constrained on process to ensure consistency (unless you want to be). Honestly, I wouldn't worry too much about this volume thing from the perspective of the post-boil volume being a few quarts up or down and how that might make or break the quality or taste of your beer (it will not).

You do probably want to have a reasonable amount of control though, mostly so you can make sure you end up with close to the intended amount of beer when the whole process is over, and so that you have a reasonable idea of how strong the beer is. This level of control is easily attainable by learning how your system and process works and accounting for its nuances (boil off rate, trub losses, etc.).

 

[TexasDroughtBrewery]

Hi,

I've been brewing a few recipes where it called to collect 6.25 gallons of wort pre-boil. After I'm done the 60 minute boil and chill it to 70F, I'm left with 4.5 gallons when the recipe says I should have 5.25 gallons.

My question is, will adding more volume pre-boil affect my OG? I'm assuming because I live in Canada that the cold of the winter is evaporating more of my wort than a warmer climate? If I lost a total of 1.75 gallons through boiling and chilling, should I prepare myself next time to collect more wort so that I end up with 5.25?

Any feedback is appreciated.

This happens to me also, at first it annoyed the piss out of me to be completely honest, but like these guys are saying you have to tune your water which in result you have to also tune your recipe.

My advise...and what I did. I just followed the recipes and concentrated on getting the right OG, FG, Ferm temps...just really honing in my process before I worried about how much volume I was producing b/c at the end of the day if my beer was good and I ended with 4.5 gallons that was better than messing it up and getting nothing. Then you can start fixing your volumes once you really have the processes down.

Why do I say that...b/c if you are new and you spend all the time adjusting water volumes and recipes and get bad beer you might quit the hobby early.

 

[Steelhorses]

+1

in the beginning it's easy to get caught up by the idea you are going to be making boatloads of beer... ( which is kind of the whole idea), and forget that without quality, the quantity is pretty pointless.... Fighting problems usually just leads to frustrations that unfortunately causes people to just give up eventually.

I found starting out that by focusing on the process i.e. proper temps, OG. FG etc. got me much better results (beer wise) and enticed me to expand my knowledge and further improve my processes.... Brewing becomes a lot of fun and very enjoyable then.