more wort from sparging than planned. is this good or bad???

[bog69]

more wort from sparging than planned. is this good or bad??? the 1st & last time we did ag we stopped sparging when we had enough wort (as per recipe). is it wise to get as much out of the grains, up to a point, as possible or is there a good reason for finishing early. our recipe said to stop when it gets to 1008. we were still getting around 1012+ when we stopped. it was a 19l brew & we finished up with 17l . our equipment is capable of doing 30l brews (2x 50l boilers & 8 gallon mash tun) i know we would have to up the hops etc for more wort.

[farmhousekeg]

more wort from sparging than planned. is this good or bad??? the 1st & last time we did ag we stopped sparging when we had enough wort (as per recipe). is it wise to get as much out of the grains, up to a point, as possible or is there a good reason for finishing early. our recipe said to stop when it gets to 1008. we were still getting around 1012+ when we stopped. it was a 19l brew & we finished up with 17l . our equipment is capable of doing 30l brews (2x 50l boilers & 8 gallon mash tun) i know we would have to up the hops etc for more wort.

Personally I batch sparge so this is not an issue but like you I have also read that with fly sparging you should stop when the wort reaches 1.008

Did you get your numbers mixed up in your post? You say you got 17 litres but it was a 19 litre brew? Did you mean the other way around as your post says more wort from sparging than planned?

If you were still getting 1.012 at the target wort volume, then it means that your efficiency was higher than planned for in the recipe, which is GOOD as this means you can use less malt for the same OG (thus brewing your beer a few pennies cheaper).

[bog69]

we ended up with 17l instead of 19l by following the recipe to the letter. we only took the amount from the mash tun as per recipe. 2litres wasted in steam i presume. there was an allowance for hops & steam but that must be wrong. the hop boiler was empty of liquid except for what had been soaked into hops.
if we kept going while we were still getting usable wort we could of maybe got 20-21l of beer. didnt want to keep going & start getting bad things in the brew

[bog69]

was our 1st attempt. next time we'll add 20% more water & see what happens. as long as we dont go below 1008 i hope we should be ok