Dialing in a new homebrew system

[paulquinn]

Hey everybody,

I've got one batch under my belt on my new system and my volume and gravity were off a bit, so I'm hoping to dial everything in for my next batch and was wondering if y'all could share some advice on what to look out for.

So far here's what I plan to calculate and account for:

-boil off volume
-loss to trub (how do you calculate this?)
-boil kettle dead space
-mashtun deadspace

Anything else I'm forgetting?

Thanks!

 

[brewkinger]

A little scientific investigation / experimentation.
Dry runs with your equipment to calculate some of these things.
Fill your boil kettle up with 3-4 gallons of water and boil for 60 min and then measure what is left... Evaporation loss calculated.
Drain your boil kettle now, like you would on brew day and then measure the loss there (I lose about 2-3 cups here)

I filled my cooler mash tun and did the same basic thing to calculate tun deadspace; although I think this is a baseline amount and varies for me slightly with different grain bills.

Loss to trub is another variable baseline number; this can change with the recipe. My basic ales with 1-3oz of hops usually 3-4 cups of loss in kettle and 1/2 gallon in fermenter.
Big IPA that I make is closer to 4-5 cups in kettle and 0.75 gallons loss in fermenter.

Then keep good records of your brewdays and "tweak" your process and fine tune it. This is one of the best bits of advice to new and intermediate brewers. That and browse this forum..!!!!


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[LLBrewer]

I have 2 variables: wort into the kettle and wort into the fermenter. Always have enough sparge water to hit your preboil volume and the rest comes out in the wash. Unless you are going to try and optimize some variable why worry about it? What you really need to know is how many lbs of grain give you what OG for a given preboil volume. Unless I'm brewing commercially, I really don't care too much about brewhouse efficiency.
BTW, boil off is not a constant. It's directly related to how hard you are boiling the wort.

 

[RonPopeil]

Dry runs or SMASH brews are good for calibrating yourself to your gear. Boil 5 gallons for an hour and then pour it into buckets and measure what's left. The difference is your boil off.

Brew a 10# SMASH batch. Collect your first run and calculate the difference. That's your absorption per 10# of grain + mashtun dead space. To separate your dead space from this fill the tun with water and drain it. Measure how much is left in the tun when it stops free flowing.

Loss to trub is harder because trub depends on your boil and your grain bill. It's also much less of a factor if you have the rest dialed in. Generally I have .33-.5 gallons of trub depending on how high gravity my beer is.

 

[steveoatley]

BTW, boil off is not a constant. It's directly related to how hard you are boiling the wort.

Boil off is also directly related to the 'weather' conditions when & where you are brewing

Brewing in your garage, and it is 10F outside, very low humidity, Lots of boil off
Brewing in July on the patio, 82 F and 70% humidity, much lower boil off

Some commercial brewers create 'near vacuum' s in their Boil Kettle so they can control boil off.

 

[RonPopeil]

Boil off is also directly related to the 'weather' conditions when & where you are brewing

Brewing in your garage, and it is 10F outside, very low humidity, Lots of boil off
Brewing in July on the patio, 82 F and 70% humidity, much lower boil off

Some commercial brewers create 'near vacuum' s in their Boil Kettle so they can control boil off.

Living in a "4 seasons" part of the country I can verify this as well. Winter brewing always needs more water than summer brewing.

 

[old_tx_kbb]

I'd suggest calibrating all of your measuring tools. Make sure your scale that you use to measure your grain is correct. Make sure your hydrometers, thermometers, and refractors are reading correctly and if not, factor in the necessary differences in your measurements.