Question about OG being to high

[zach976]

I brewed my first all brewed brew a few weeks back (Austin Homebrew Real Ale Fireman's 4 clone 5gal). I started my 60 min boil with 6.25 gallons of wort and ended with less than 5 gallons. I apparently boiled off more than I anticipated. The recipe said you would end up with 5 1/4 gallons for my primary. My OG was suppose to be 1.050 and my actual reading was 1.060. I want to know how to compensate for this on my next brew. Should I start with more water or should I follow the directions and just add water to the wort after my boil?

 

[Yooper]

I brewed my first all brewed brew a few weeks back (Austin Homebrew Real Ale Fireman's 4 clone 5gal). I started my 60 min boil with 6.25 gallons of wort and ended with less than 5 gallons. I apparently boiled off more than I anticipated. The recipe said you would end up with 5 1/4 gallons for my primary. My OG was suppose to be 1.050 and my actual reading was 1.060. I want to know how to compensate for this on my next brew. Should I start with more water or should I follow the directions and just add water to the wort after my boil?

Until you know your actual efficiency, you can just add a little water to your fermenter after you take the OG to get to the desired OG. You may miss a little low next time, or not. If you're high again, you can assume a higher efficiency than the recipe states. Of course, you're a little short on volume in this batch. If you have, say, 4.75 gallons of 1.060 wort, and the recipe called for 1.050 at 5.25 gallons, you'd have 1.054 if you added .5 gallons. That's actually very close to predicted.

I'm not sure what AHS has as their default efficiency, probably 68-70% or so, so you may be right in that ballpark.

Once you do it a few times, and are consistent, then you can make some changes if needed to adjust for your own efficiency.

 

[zach976]

Until you know your actual efficiency, you can just add a little water to your fermenter after you take the OG to get to the desired OG. You may miss a little low next time, or not. If you're high again, you can assume a higher efficiency than the recipe states. Of course, you're a little short on volume in this batch. If you have, say, 4.75 gallons of 1.060 wort, and the recipe called for 1.050 at 5.25 gallons, you'd have 1.054 if you added .5 gallons. That's actually very close to predicted.

I'm not sure what AHS has as their default efficiency, probably 68-70% or so, so you may be right in that ballpark.

Once you do it a few times, and are consistent, then you can make some changes if needed to adjust for your own efficiency.

Thanks for the reply. So you think I should just go by the directions on my next few batches to see if I have a trend going. If I'm consistently coming up short on wort with a higher OG, should I just run off more wort to compensate for my boil off loss?

 

[chickypad]

If I'm consistently coming up short on wort with a higher OG, should I just run off more wort to compensate for my boil off loss?

Yes, now that you know your boil off rate figure out how much pre boil volume you need and sparge until you get there. With this added sparge you may oveshoot the OG a bit more. If you keep good track of your measurements and volumes, after a few batches you can figure your average efficiency and then adjust future recipes accordingly.