Help with boiling quantities

[DeadlyGoldfish]

Hi,

I've just finished bottling some Hop Back Summer Lightening from GW's book.

I thought I would go for the 9ltr option so that I can test a large range of beers and not have stockpiles of similar beer.

However, what I have ended up with is only about 6.5ltrs of bottled beer.

The process I used was as follows:

1) Used Beer Engine to give me the quantities required
2) For 9ltrs it suggested I need 12.9 ltrs of water, so I did that, once I added the spray malt I started with 13.5ltrs
3) Boil for 90 but that only left me with 9ltrs!

Q: Should I at this point of added more water at the end of the boil, or is 9ltrs what I was aiming for according to Beer Engine or was I supposed to be aiming for 12.9 AFTER the boil?

4) However, the original gravity was spot on with the 9ltrs at 1049
5) Once I transferred to FV I was left with around 7.5ltrs
6) Final gravity was spot on after as well at around 1011
6) Once bottled I was left with 6.5ltrs

A whole lot of work for not so much beer, tasted good though on the bottling, fingers crossed it will taste better in 4 weeks time or so!

So I'm thinking I should really be doing 15ltrs in Beer Engine world to come out with something worthy of my efforts!?

Answers to my Q above and thoughts please...

[micromaniac]

if you say you did your brew from gws book,it tells you in the rescipe layout how much water you boil away in a say 23itr brew this amount of boiloff water lost will be the same for 9ltrs as it would for 23 ltrs if you boil both quantitysfor the same lenght of time so just add this amount to your choice of volume i,m sure he also telles how to calculate for brew sizes.devide the amount of say extract he tells you to use in a 23ltr brew by 23 then times that number by the brew lenght you are going to make.same for hops etc

[DeadlyGoldfish]

Ah I see, I've obviously over looked that, doh!

In the book the 19ltrs says it needs 27.5ltrs.

Therefore are you saying that for 9ltrs at the end I should have used 17.5ltrs to start?

So why does Beer Engine state 23.9 for a 19ltr brew, do I need to change my evaporation to something like 30%? 3ltrs in Wort waste seems about right to me.

[micromaniac]

Ah I see, I've obviously over looked that, doh!

In the book the 19ltrs says it needs 27.5ltrs.

Therefore are you saying that for 9ltrs at the end I should have used 17.5ltrs to start?

So why does Beer Engine state 23.9 for a 19ltr brew, do I need to change my evaporation to something like 30%? 3ltrs in Wort waste seems about right to me.

it goes up in incriment by volume ,what you have to remember is the more hop and grains you have in a brew the more liquor will be soaked up as so lost in these grains.it pays to under estimate and top up at the end than to have an fv full of pond water.and i would say about 14ltrs

[DeadlyGoldfish]

Sorry for even more questions...

So when you say 14ltrs, is that what I should be expecting to end up with POST boil? If so that is only .4 of a ltr more than I did start with, but the result was that I ended up bottling 6.5ltrs, not ideal for the effort.

[sladeywadey]

the volume in beer engine is what you aim to end up with After boiling and draining from the boiler to the FV. This is calculated by taking into account evaporation/hop soakage and boiler dead space. I've just (hopefully) made a TTL clone where I stared with 32l and working on a 15% loss due to evaporation (4.8litres) over a 90 minute boil and 2 litres of dead space etc I ended up with just shy of 25 litres into the FV with a FG of 1044.