This is kind of a random question that I've never really known the answer to. After you do your mash or after you do your boil - how do you really know how much wort you have? Are you making your best judgment and therefore estimating what your specific OG will be after the boil or is there actually something you can do to figure out the exact volume? This leads me to another question, how do you actually know what you are going to boil off on any given day? I understand that lots of equipment is labeled but its usually by the gallon so it would be pretty hard to pinpoint exactly what you have... Does this question actually make sense to people or am I on my own planet?
Some people make a measuring stick out of a wooden dowel (or whatever), fill their pot with known amounts of water, then mark the stick. Likewise, I put incremental markings on my carboys. Your boiloff is just something you have to dial in. It should be fairly consistent per minute, assuming same equipment and same vigor of boil. Estimate/measure it in volume per hour, then convert to per minute for different boil lengths. Don't use percentages for boiloff.
It can, but generally it'll stay somewhat close enough for who it's for... I'd suggest getting a CPVC stick, filling your kettle with known water amounts and marking them off on the stick. Easy to do, won't burn, won't toss flavors in there, and it's easier to clean and sanitize as well. Makes spot checking easy.
I'll echo. I have a wooden dowel marked at every quart I use to measure my strike and sparge water (calibrated to my turkey fryer kettle). I installed a sight glass on my keggle and calibrated it to every half gallon with the same container I used to calibrate my dowel. I also marked up my Better Bottles every quart from 3 gallons up to 6 using the same container again. That gives me the reading going into the mash, the reading after the mash, reading after the boil, and reading in the fermenter all from the same calibrating container. I also filled up the BB to 5.5 gals, then dumped it all into the keggle to make sure they matched.
One of the guys in my brew club got some nice stencils and etched the markings on his carboys. Classy as hell, and the markings don't wash off like the Sharpie does.
Yes, it will change depending on weather conditions as well as kettle material (ie aluminum vs SS) and kettle shape, and obviously boil length.
I recently got a good-sized digital scale (up to 650 lbs). When I'm done boiling I weigh the brew kettle, subtract the weight of the pot itself, and divide by 8.345 (or whatever it is that a gallon of liquid weighs, I have it written down in my brew notebook) to see how many gallons I have.
Don't forget to adjust for the gravity of the wort. Five gallons of a 1.100 wort would be off by nearly a half gallon judging just by weight of water. Hardly an insignificant error.
Good point. I've only been brewing pretty low gravity stuff (<1.050) since I've gone this route, so it shouldn't be too far off. At least compared to hand-drawn hash marks on a stick.
Sight glass on the hlt keg lets me measure volume going into thr mash and sparge, sight glass on the bk gets my my wort volumes.
When people make markings, do they do it with cold water? What I did was to actually weight my water and make graduations. Then after a few sparges to a set volume I noticed the increase in the level just as the boil started. Then I keep that added level throughout. Seems to work. Are you talking about the added space that the sugars take up. I notice this a lot when I make starters. When I add the DME there is off course a significant change in the level. And this is only a 1.035'ish concentration. I guess somehow I've compensated for all of this. Either I want to boil for a certain amount of time or I want to reduce what I have to a certain gravity. I just use a spreadsheet and I'm good.
He was just talking about the mass of a gallon of wort being heavier than a gallon of water. Water has a specific gravity of 1.000. So a wort with a gravity of 1.100 is 10% heavier per gallon... (1.100 - 1.000) ------------------ = 10% 1.000 Water is ~ 8.345 lbs per gallon 1.100 wort is ~ 9.180 lbs per gallon So if caretavebrew were to weigh a 1.100 gravity wort on his scale and find that it's 41.725 lbs, and then divide by water's 8.345 lbs per gallon, he'd assume he has 5 gallons. Adjusting for gravity, he'd divide 41.725 lbs by 9.180 lbs per gallon, and get a better estimate of 4.55 gallons.
I just use a bathroom scale to weigh the big stuff, and correct for the density with my refractometer readings. It gets me to within a pint or two, which is good enough for me.
Hey, that's what I love about this forum, constantly learning. Luckily it's only been 2 batches that I've used this method. Time to hash some lines, I suppose. Thanks for the correction VikeMan and mikehartigan.
