Beer Forum

so yesterday was a big step for me and alot of fun, a beautiful spring day in NYC and a borrowed 10 Gallon kettle allowed me to use my propane burner setup for the first time and brew outside!

so I drew up with a mini-mash/extract Brutal Bitter Clone that was supposed to have an OG of around 1.060 (Im using Beer Alchemy for mac) I calculated the recipe to yeild 5.25 G of wort from a 7 G boil taking in to account boil off and lost wort from 4oz of whole crystal hops.

this was my first time using the propane burner and I had a good boil going but I noticed you can really crank it up with these babies and get a super rolling boil going and avoided that in fear of too much wort boiling off, so after a 60 min boil I chilled and transfered the 5.25 G to my primary however there was still a considerable amount of wort in the kettle about 1/2 gallon would be a good estimate, so I drew a sample and took a corrected OG reading of 1.053.

wonder if anyone can help me figure out what happened here did I not boil off enough wort? Is this part of the trial and error of having a new system? Unfortunately I wont be brewing with that keetle again, next time i will have a keggle, any thoughts or comments appreciated.

-Ray

Looks like you need to "get to know" your system, and reflect this in the software you used. Since this was your first batch "outside" with this set-up, you will need to tweak the parameters of the software to align with your final product.
Good luck,
-Greg

thanks for the input, Im gonna brew alot this Spring so hopefully I get to know my system quickly

Sounds like you didn't get the efficiency on your mini-mash that you were looking for. BeerSmith and ProMash will calculate a "pre-boil" gravity for you - based on your anticipated efficiency. It sounds like your volume, evap rate, and loss to trub was fine. I think that if you checked your pre-boil, you would have been a little low and could have corrected with a little extra DME. Strive for consistency in your mini-mashing process - and fine tune your efficiency numbers.


Mylo

A refractometer will allow you to check pre-boil gravity as well as the gravity at the end of the boil to determine if you're hitting your numbers. A metal measuring stick will also help determine the volume near the end of the boil in case you had more or less evaporation than expected. You'll figure it out with more practice.