Brewing Master

Question:

No problem, really.  I used to always do it that way. I just prefer to do it before because that way I don’t have to worry about whether the top up water is mixed in before I take a gravity reading.  Also, I get a larger boil volume, which reduces the chance of carmelization. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Hi Denny, what’s the problem with topping up with boiled water at the end of the boil? If you boil the topped wort with hot water and let the whole thing boil for another 5 min., the water should mix thoroughly with the wort. I had this same problem when I started using a converted keg boiler on a 170K BTU propane burner.  After about 3 brews, I had a handle on how much would boil away, so I just started adding water preboil/post sparge.  That way I don’t have to top up at the end. Gregor

Response:

Hi Denny, what’s the problem with topping up with boiled water at the end of the boil? If you boil the topped wort with hot water and let the whole thing boil for another 5 min., the water should mix thoroughly with the wort. I had this same problem when I started using a converted keg boiler on a 170K BTU propane burner.  After about 3 brews, I had a handle on how much would boil away, so I just started adding water preboil/post sparge.  That way I don’t have to top up at the end.

Gregor

Response:

i have the exact same problem last saturday. i was doing a  3 gallon batch…..and collected about 4 gallons in my 5 gallon brewpot. i boiled 60min and ended up with 2.5 gallons….at a gravity of 1.062 .. i was aiming for more like 1.056, so i topped up the primary with a half gallon of water…..and NO i did NOT boil the water first.  i never did when i topping off my extract brews..and i never had a problem.  my evaporation is always around 30% or more, so this is the method i’ve adopted. matt

– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – After making the switch to all grain brewing, I’ve run into a bit of a problem. My worts are losing too much of their volume during the boil. Of course this doesn’t cause too many problems, as I can just top off to about 5.5 gallons… I sparge to a total volume of approximately 7 gallons, but after the boil, I can only get about 4.5 to 4.75 gallons. I’m sure that the problem is the width of my kettle, a large enamel canning pot — 36 quart or so — which is shallow and wide. I’ve tried partially covering the pot but this seems to up the vigor of the boil and actually increase the rate of evaporation. Is there any solution to this other than getting a taller, narrower and much more expensive SS kettle? On an entirely different matter, my first all grain batch, an attempt at a dark ale, came out tasting like dead ringer for a dunkel Weissen. I racked onto the yeast cake of a pale ale that I’d made using a lot of lemon zest in the boil and which used White Labs American Ale Yeast — the resulting beer is very lemony. Could this cause the yeast to produce the clovey phenols that characterize a Weissen in the second beer using the same yeast cake? The weissen characteristics are not at all present in the lemony ale. Or is this likely just a fortutiously un-harmful infection of wild yeast? Thanks, Wes

Response:

My worts are losing too much of their volume during the boil. I’ve tried  partially covering the pot but this seems to up the vigor of the boil and actually increase the rate of evaporation.

Turn the flame down.  You should be able to get an evaporation rate of ~ 20 % – Benny

Response:

– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – On an entirely different matter, my first all grain batch, an attempt at a dark ale, came out tasting like dead ringer for a dunkel Weissen. I racked onto the yeast cake of a pale ale that I’d made using a lot of lemon zest in the boil and which used White Labs American Ale Yeast — the resulting beer is very lemony. Could this cause the yeast to produce the clovey phenols that characterize a Weissen in the second beer using the same yeast cake? The weissen characteristics are not at all present in the lemony ale. Or is this likely just a fortutiously un-harmful infection of wild yeast? I don’t know, but I find it very interesting.  I was talking with a friend about Jack Schmidling’s reuse of yeast for his next batch and his colder than normal fermentation temperature.  We finally hypothesised that Jack has developed his own strain of yeast that has adapted (mutated) to the colder fermentation temps. If you think about it, the reason we usually do not reuse yeast over a few generations is because they will mutate from say a Scottish Ale into something new and different.  That doesn’t say that it would be new and undrinkable, just not to the style you were looking.

Strangely enough, this is *why* I re-use my yeast. I am trying to get my "own brand". I think I’m getting there but I’ve only been doing this for about 9 or 10 months. In another year or so, though