Wort Boiling

[dudester]

I usually start with 6.5 gal. of wort after sparging  and after an hour of boiling I end up with 4.5 gal. Should I top it off to 5 gallons of water . I hate to be short changed . I am new at this.  its an all grain recipe.

[UselessBrewing]

First let me say. Welcome to the forum! We are glad you are here.
If you are consistently coming up short on your brew-day's. You should recheck your equipment settings in BeerSmith ( http://www.beersmith.com/equipment_setup.htm ) . You may also want to think about increasing your batch size on your recipe to 5.5 Gallons. This will leave you with about 5 Gallons after your primary and secondary fermentation's. I typically start a boil at about 7-7.5 Gallons depending on the boil length. 

Cheers
Preston

[MaltLicker]

That's a 30% evaporation rate, which sounds high.  Is any of this 2-gallon loss getting trapped in the boiler and just not transferred? 

If you're certain of the equipment and boil-off rate, you could either reduce the vigor of the boil or start with more wort as Preston said.  The 5.5 batch size is good b/c you're more likely to have 5.0 after a couple transfers and the loss to trub in the primary. 

[dudester]

Thanks guys, I appreciate the info. Lets say if I was to add preboiled cooled water to the fermenter to bring it to 5 galons is that a bad practice. Would it be a watered down beer.

[UselessBrewing]

Adding Preboiled and cooled water to the primary would not be a bad thing as long as your OG was what was expected, and if that were the case then no it would not be watered down.

People look down on this practice because it has the potential to introduce an infection. So as long as you do everything possible to keep that from happening, you should be fine.

Cheers
Preston

[MaltLicker]

........if I was to add preboiled cooled water to the fermenter to bring it to 5 galons is that a bad practice. Would it be a watered down beer.

In my opinion, if you boiled "too hot" once, and came up short unexpectedly, then this would be the corrective action to take to get 5.0 gallons in the fermenter.  If this keeps happening, however, you'd want to address the underlying issue, since you have a big-enough pot to conduct a full boil.  If 6.5 gallons is the max you can start with, and you like your boil rate, then I'd suggest adding that extra water in the boil so it gets boiled and sterilized.  At least you'd vastly reduce the risk of infection from using cooled water. 

To Preston's point, if your SG target is 1.050 and you hit that number with 4.5 gallons remaining, then you'd be watering down your beer just to reach 5.0 gallons.   If you must have 5.0 gallons then you'd have to hit 1.055 (or something) before adding any water.  It's a volume:gravity trade-off. 

[CR]

You can add water to top off your ferment so long as you took proper care to  boil it for a spell first.

As an aside:
Depending on your primary fermenter you  can choose to leave the water low  on purpose just so you'll have room for all the foam you will be getting.   Then top it off in the secondary.


But just remember the golden rule of everything:
If you don't do it my way, it won't be any good.

[UselessBrewing]

But just remember the golden rule of everything:
If you don't do it my way, it won't be any good.

Sheesh now you tell me...

No wonder everything I brew is useless... d:

Cheers
Preston

[CR]

But just remember the golden rule of everything:
If you don't do it my way, it won't be any good.

Sheesh now you tell me...

No wonder everything I brew is useless... d:

Cheers
Preston

L-o-L  How many times have I been on a forum of  one sort or other  and encountered pretty much that exact position.
If you didn't buy the same brand or model of woodworking machinery or didn't use a specific tool yadda yadda yadda.
I get a kick out people who get themselves sold on the notion that there's only one way to do it and it's their way.