What is your preboil volume?

Get advice on making beer from raw ingredients (malt, hops, water and yeast)
Post Reply
User avatar
Horatio
Under the Table
Posts: 1214
Joined: Mon Nov 30, 2009 3:07 pm
Location: Stanford le Hope, Essex. UK

Re: What is your preboil volume?

Post by Horatio » Wed Sep 14, 2011 4:49 pm

Runwell-Steve wrote:
HighHops wrote:Sounds like I am under sparging, stopping at 27L in the kettle! I probably lose 4-5L on the boil and then usually top up the kettle after cooling with another 4-5L of preboiled cooled water to 25-26L again in the kettle to allow for hop absorbtion. This also helps get the temperature down that last few degrees for pitching temp. I was worried about extracting tannins by over sparging. I will have a look at this next brew and push it up to 30ish L in the kettle. It's probably costing me brew efficiency.

Get yourself a refractometer then it's really easy to check the gravity of your runnings as you sparge.
Never having used one of these, do you still need to correct them for temperture Steve? I like the idea of quicker readings when sparging.
If I had all the money I'd spent on brewing... I'd spend it on brewing!
Top
User avatar
gregorach
Under the Table
Posts: 1912
Joined: Wed Jun 08, 2011 10:07 am
Location: Edinburgh
Contact:
Contact gregorach

Re: What is your preboil volume?

Post by gregorach » Wed Sep 14, 2011 5:24 pm

Refractometers are great... Everyone should have one. :) You theoretically need to correct for the ambient temperature (unless you get one with Auto Temperature Correction) but you don't really need to worry too much about the wort temperature - since you're only testing a drop of wort, it cools very quickly.
Cheers

Dunc
Top
User avatar
Horatio
Under the Table
Posts: 1214
Joined: Mon Nov 30, 2009 3:07 pm
Location: Stanford le Hope, Essex. UK

Re: What is your preboil volume?

Post by Horatio » Thu Sep 15, 2011 12:18 am

Thanks Dunc! I may have to get one. :D
If I had all the money I'd spent on brewing... I'd spend it on brewing!
Top
mark4newman

Re: What is your preboil volume?

Post by mark4newman » Thu Sep 15, 2011 8:03 am

Hi

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ws/eBayISAPI. ... OU:GB:1123

I agree with Dunc, these things are great. I just watch the OG during the boil (Just multiply by 4 to get the OG) , and then I only need a few drops to work out how the fermention is doing. However you need to adjust for Alc so you need some software.

http://onebeer.net/refractometer.shtml

I can't imagine going back to the floaters :wink:
Top
HighHops

Re: What is your preboil volume?

Post by HighHops » Thu Sep 15, 2011 9:53 pm

I've got a refrac but don't use it because Im not sure when to stop sparging.
Should I be stopping about 2 Brix?

Image
Top
User avatar
Kev888
So far gone I'm on the way back again!
Posts: 7701
Joined: Fri Mar 19, 2010 6:22 pm
Location: Derbyshire, UK

Re: What is your preboil volume?

Post by Kev888 » Fri Sep 16, 2011 12:24 pm

Opinion varies but generally people seem to consider that you should stop sparging when the gravity of the runnings drop to 1.010 or some say 1.006. I think (from a table i found on t'internet) the equivalent in Brix would be 2.56 or 1.54 respectively (as there's no alcohol at this stage there's no need to compensate for that).

Cheers
Kev
Kev
Top
Post Reply

Return to “Grain Brewing”