1st All Grain: too Much Wort.

[Crusader-Rob]

Hi everyone:

So I'm trying to correct my water volumes, here is what i did below, hopefully some advice will help me correct also.
Using Beersmith, i used Medium body-Batch sparge
Recipe was as follows:
*4.5kg Maris Otter, and 0.5kg Caramalt
*beer smith said 16 litres to mash at 66 degrees (water heated to 72), ended up at 64 degrees, and i lost 1 degree in an hour.
*I pre heated the MLT with 2 litres of boiling water and removed after 5-10 mins.
*Mash for 1 hour, and did my run off, ended up with 9.5-10 litres of wort, and began to heat that, 1.032 was my Og on first runnings.
*i then added sparage 1 of 6.75litres at 76 degrees, and ran off as normal.
*i then added my second sparge of 17 litres, and repeated as above.
Boiled 60 mins with EKG Hops Additions 60-30-1(40g-30g-30g)

and Irish moss @15mins
Cooled and pitched 1028 wyeast, 2 litre starter.

I ended up with about 6 litre of wort left over, for 21 litre batch plus starter=23 litres
and still got 1.048 OG before yeast pitching. Beersmith said it should have been 1.051, so i didn't miss by too much. its just a waster of good beer... (i don't have a spare vessel for the extra wort.)

anyone have advice for me on my next batch soon.?

[jt]

Did you consider freezing the excess wort to use for starters in future ?

[Crusader-Rob]

Nope, good thinking if it happens again though.

[Nick T]

There are adjustments in Beersmith for 'losses' - to trub, within the system (ie tied up in hoselines etc) and what you can't get out of the bottom of your kettle. You could adjust those down a bit (perhaps by a couple of litres this time and see how it goes), but I wouldn't overdo it, far better to have a bit left over (to freeze and use for future yeast starters as jt suggests) than having to scrounge around using a wort recovery protocol to get enough to go into the fermenter. 

[Ralph]

That does sound like too much water.

Adding up the volumes you get almost 40L to start with.

Take off 5L for what the grain will absorb = 35L

60min boil you might lose another 5L = 30L

Losses for dead space in the mash tun and losses to trub. I usually leave about 3L for my system so now at 27L which sounds like about what you ended up with... which would mean you have something set wrong somewhere if you were aiming for 23L? I would take some time and check all the tabs and look through each of the fields and see if you can find something set incorrectly that is giving you too much water? There is a tab that has all the water volumes stepped out... following through that you should be able to see where it was different.

With the efficiency. It is easy to hit 75% plus by batch sparging with a mash tun. If the efficiency was set at 70% or something on the first page then it may be that you had better efficiency and that may be why you were still reasonably close on the OG even though you had more volume.

[Crusader-Rob]

Agreed. it did seemlike too much when i did it, but i thought, i'd follow it to see what i'd get first up. it was set to 70% on the dot i think. I haven't looked for awhile, so I'll have a look to see what i can see its a 50l cooler btw, and a 50l boilpot.

 I absorbed about 5litres into the grain. and i was actually aiming for 21, with a 2litre starter maiking 23...

[Vesku]

I use my excess for bread making or for a pizza dough. It gives a really nice flavor.

[Crusader-Rob]

ooooh, sounds interesting, how does that work?

[Vesku]

I just replace water in the recipe with the wort. The wort has to be low gravity, last drops of the sparge, you don't want to add too much "sugar" in the dough.

[Grant R Baker]

Yep.. you need to learn your evaporation schedule for your gear.

 

Beersmith helps you target the water amounts require but you need to plug in your evaporation litres per hour from your kettle.

 

For example: my 55l pot loses about 10% per hour (of water) when doing a 25litre brew, about 9% per hour when doing a 30litre brew.  It all comes done to the amount of surface area, how vigorous your boil is verses how many litres you are boiling.

 

Put another way - either find in the Beersmith software where you can edit your evaporation ratio (can maybe tweak trub & mastun loss), then 'practice' some more brews...  you'll get there.

btw I found this tool (LINK)   a great help when targeting the gravity of a brew (still got a few with too much wort tho, maybe keep a small 5litre carboy as a over-flow fermenter).

[Chad Keven]

leftover wort is good I often do a second mini boil with additions of different goodies the last one i chucked in brown sugar and LME, reduced right down and used a Belgian yeast aiming for a Belgian dark strong/tripel style, gives you a little variation. a 5L demijon is always handy.

[Vesku]

Just watch out for the over-sparge. It's a real problem, at least when doing pilsners etc..

[Crusader-Rob]

Over Sparge?