Sun Apr 10, 2011 5:57 pm
I stumped. I recently upgraded my kettle with the intention of doing full wort boils. I plan around ultimately arriving at a 5 gallon batch of beer. So I start with 7 gallons in the kettle. Do a 1 hour boil which typically brings me down to around 6 gallons. I bring the kettle into the kitchen and hook up my immersion chiller. When it hits room temp, I transfer. Now there just a hair over 1/2 a gallon left in the brew kettle, but there's only 4.5 gallons in the fermenter. Where in the world does that other gallon of wort disappear to. I've done this 4 times in a row and I can't figure out where it goes. Can there be that much volume contraction during the cooling of the wort? Frustrating because I have to stop, boil a gallon, cool it down, add it to the fermenter, and only then can I pitch.