Which process is best?

[Chrissyr63]

Hi All,

I have been brewing AG for about a year now (with some kits in the middle) and have been swapping between short brew, topping up the boiler and adding water at the end.
I use a tweaked Lidl Jam maker as my boiler which to max level is about 23 lts and to brim about 25 lts - but my set up does have a 2-3lts deadspace depending on hops. I have to say I do like the setup and get a good boil on the wort and tasty beer at the end of it but I want to get +23lts into the fv.
I hope to upgrade to a bigger boiler at Christmas which should solve the issue (this isn't a big problem my beer is still very drinkable ) but in the meantime what do people think is the best method? My thoughts\experience are:
Short: just think I should top up to 23 as this is what fits the fridge and will give me an extra 8+ bottles of beer!
Top up: need an extra heat source to keep the wort up to 100c as I add it - and not sure it all the impurities will have boiled off but this must be minimal.
Add water: working out the hops\bitterness is a bit more complicated - have used the BIAB calc but still adds complexity.

My 'best' method seems to be a mix of the topup and add water - I will fill to 23lts and start the boil, heat the excess sparge wort (on a cooker in a different room and upstairs which is the main problem) and then add that after any boil over threat has passed - can end up with 20lts out the boiler if I am careful. I then can, if possible (depends on how many Manhattons we have drunk!) try and add the remains of a bag of shop bought ice which both cools and adds about 1lt at end of boil.
Have tried getting by sieving the 2-3lts left in boiler but this does seem to have a lot of crap in it so doesn't seem the best idea?

I know it's probably a specific setup that I have that is causing the issue but any opinion would be appreciated.

Chris

[Steve B]

Have you thought about reducing your deadspace? If this can't be done, when I had a small boiler I boiled the extra litres of wort on the stove and added them at the end into the FV. In your case let the few etra litres cool upstairs untill you're happy to transport it downstairs if needs be, add to the FV and away you go.

[Chrissyr63]

Hi Steve,

Yes that was what I was looking at - I use a steel mesh filter on boiler made from braid and my thinking was that the syphon effect ends at the top - so about 2-3cm - if I replace this with copper tube drilled at bottom that would be nearer 0.5-1cm - extra 2lts.
I assume when you are brewing 100+ Lt brews the lose of a Lt here and there is not such an issue - when it's 20+ it's bit of a loss.

C

[roscoe]

its the classic faff about to squeeze out an extra bottle rather than re-size, I do it all the time...
I just make 5% stronger and toss 5% more water in the FV, if its a carmelly ale I'll do the first runnings mega boil off (never made a huge difference taste wise to me)
but nowadays it's not the loss of a few bottles, I just make a few bottles less and save time and more time saved due to less cleaning from boiling over
calcs are never better than +/-5% anyways