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Author Topic: astringency  (Read 12129 times)

Offline redzim

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Re: astringency
« Reply #30 on: January 03, 2013, 01:52:57 pm »

i don't think you need an aggressive boil off. again with my electric system it is not much of a boil off at all, i think 1/2 g per hour.

OK but how is the liquid moving? I did a boil off test this morning, with just water in my kettle, and trying to evaporate as little as possible, and over 90 minutes it went from 14 gal to 9.5 gal, at what I would call "barely" boiling, more like a rough simmer.... this is less than I am used to doing in a 90min boil (19 gals -> 11 gal) but I don't know if it was making enough movement in the liquid.  It certainly was evaporating, though, and maybe that's all that matters.  Just to remind you all, my kettle is 26" in diameter!

Offline tschmidlin

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Re: astringency
« Reply #31 on: January 03, 2013, 11:47:44 pm »
Try a lid, it will cut down a lot on your evaporation.
Tom Schmidlin

Offline hopfenundmalz

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Re: astringency
« Reply #32 on: January 04, 2013, 05:48:17 am »
Try a lid, it will cut down a lot on your evaporation.

Tom has good advice. Think about a large kettle in a brewery, the stack is only a small part of the area of the kettle. The large breweries have a pretty active boil (the wort is jumping up high when you look in), but the boil off rate is in the 4-8% range.
Jeff Rankert
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Offline redzim

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Re: astringency
« Reply #33 on: January 04, 2013, 05:54:03 am »
Try a lid, it will cut down a lot on your evaporation.

The lid idea is today's (or tomorrow's) test!

But if that doesn't work, how does my logic sound on this:
-collect ~6-7 gal first runnings as usual
-instead of collecting 9 gal sparge to make my 16 gal pre-boil for 60 min boils (or collecting 12 gals sparge for my 90 min boils) collect say 6 more gallons to get ~12 total pre-boil
-at the start of the boil, add whatever additional water I need to get up to 16 (or 19) gallons and boil as usual (although based on my tests, I could probably get away with only 14-15 gal preboil if I reduce the boil rate as I tried yesterday)

A few questions:   Would I calculate out the added minerals using Kai's spreadsheet based on the total preboil  volume? Which would sort of concentrate the minerals in the mash but they would be diluted in the boil.... 

Or would I add calculate minerals just based on how much sparge water I am actually using? And in that case, should I add proportional amounts of minerals to the water I'm diluting the boil with, in other words use the same water for everything? To me, that makes the most sense....

-red

Offline redzim

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Re: astringency
« Reply #34 on: January 05, 2013, 07:13:23 am »
Try a lid, it will cut down a lot on your evaporation.

The lid idea is today's (or tomorrow's) test!



Well boiling with a lid didn't cut down on evaporation much, even with about 85% covered I reduced it from 5gal/hr to 3.5gal/hr...   So what does anyone think about these questions I posed yesterday:

Quote

But if that doesn't work, how does my logic sound on this:
-collect ~6-7 gal first runnings as usual
-instead of collecting 9 gal sparge to make my 16 gal pre-boil for 60 min boils (or collecting 12 gals sparge for my 90 min boils) collect say 6 more gallons to get ~12 total pre-boil
-at the start of the boil, add whatever additional water I need to get up to 16 (or 19) gallons and boil as usual (although based on my tests, I could probably get away with only 14-15 gal preboil if I reduce the boil rate as I tried yesterday)

A few questions:   Would I calculate out the added minerals using Kai's spreadsheet based on the total preboil  volume? Which would sort of concentrate the minerals in the mash but they would be diluted in the boil.... 

Or would I add calculate minerals just based on how much sparge water I am actually using? And in that case, should I add proportional amounts of minerals to the water I'm diluting the boil with, in other words use the same "water  recipe" for everything? To me, that makes the most sense....

-red

Offline weithman5

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Re: astringency
« Reply #35 on: January 05, 2013, 08:10:01 am »




Here are some pics of my kettle in action with its first batch. You had this beer red it was the number 7 or 8 I sent you.  Remember this is only a 4 g kettle with a 1500 watt element.
Don AHA member

Offline weithman5

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Re: astringency
« Reply #36 on: January 05, 2013, 08:14:44 am »
Also for starts I would just prep your water like you have been but only sparge with the halfish or so and just get the remaining water in the kettle to near boiling then ramp up as you add the wort.  You can see above that I don't go gangbusters on my boils
Don AHA member