Opinions please, lauter some more or liquor back after the boil?

[adamhc]

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for some opinion or experience with the following issue.

To achieve a certain SG once I've finished the boil there are two ways to go,
1. Lauter until the SG of the wort is lower than the desired final SG, you will then lose some water in the boil, the SG will rise and if you know your equipment well you can end up exactly where you want to go.
2. Lauter until the SG is the same (or even higher) than where you want to end up, boil and it will go higher still, then add some water to dilute back down to the desired SG.

What are the pros and cons of the two approaches? Do you end up with the same volume of wort in your fermentor? If you lauter further (option 1) do you end up with more of the 'tasty stuff' from the grain than if you dilute with pure water (option 2)? Option 2 means you can start your boil sooner, at large scale is this an economic argument to prefer it to option 1?

Cheers,

Adam

[kabrewku]

There are two answers. Firstly after you've brewed your first batch you should more or less know what your evaporation rate is. At that point there is no reason you can't hit your gravities every time (+/- 0.2). For me, I run off to about 1.5 degrees under my target for a 75min boil a full 2 degrees for a 90min. Doing this you will get a better efficiency.

Going the other route if you have a low gravity beer then you may want to "liquor back" as when you get close to the end you really aren't extracting anymore sugar, and run the risk of extracting tannins and whatnot from the grain. At this point I would add water before the boil even started.

I prefer to liquor back before the boil, but if there is a beer that I overshot my gravity, I will liquor back at the end of boil to hit my target.

[adamhc]

There are two answers. Firstly after you've brewed your first batch you should more or less know what your evaporation rate is. At that point there is no reason you can't hit your gravities every time (+/- 0.2). For me, I run off to about 1.5 degrees under my target for a 75min boil a full 2 degrees for a 90min. Doing this you will get a better efficiency.

Going the other route if you have a low gravity beer then you may want to "liquor back" as when you get close to the end you really aren't extracting anymore sugar, and run the risk of extracting tannins and whatnot from the grain. At this point I would add water before the boil even started.

I prefer to liquor back before the boil, but if there is a beer that I overshot my gravity, I will liquor back at the end of boil to hit my target.

I agree that once you know your kit you can hit your gravity, but if you go into the boil at a higher gravity then you can start the boil sooner, and there is a smaller volume of liquid so it's quicker to heat up, cool down etc.

Also, if you are going to liquor back why do it before the boil? At that point you're adding water only to boil it off again straight away.

[jebzter]

In my experience, with my equipment, our boil off is 7%, not a huge amount of extra liquid. But I turn the heat on once we get up to the tops of the jackets, I will be up to boiling about 15 min after end of runoff. If you're worried about that extra 7-10% of liquid adding on a ton of time, why not turn the heat on sooner. Why not use all that you can get out of the grain.

[adamhc]

I agree that you might as well get everything you can out of the grain. Thanks for the advice guys!