topping up boiler with wort.

[eddnix]

As my boiler holds 27l and I always sparge for 30l to leave me with 23l post boil. I often worry if the later top ups are getting a vigorous enough boil.

So yesterday I popped the remaining 4 litres in a pan and boiled them, topping up the main copper as needed. I did seem to get a clearer wort using this method, I also hit 23l spot on at the end of the boil.

Is this good practice? Thoughts?

[des]

I think you mean that your concerned that late additions of wort do not get boiled enough and I think that makes sense.

Have you considered making a more concentrated wort and topping up with boiling water instead of wort, this way you can guarantee the volume at the end of boil is exactly what you want.

just stick an extra half kilo of grain in and sparge to 25 liters, then top up with boiling water during the boil to maintain the level at your desired 23 litres.

This will cost you about 50p more on the brew and your efficiency will drop a few percent, but the brew quality will be improved as you will eliminate any chance of over sparging.

I now deliberately work with low efficiencies in this way because I think it's worth it.

Cheers

Des

[des]

fwiw the last couple of gallons when fly sparging or the second batch when batch sparging contains much fewer proteins and doesn't require boiling for as long.

So it would be a good idea to keep that separate from the first runnings then, and the additions would be the stuff that didnt matter so much. In practice this would be the last 7 liters of the sparge in this case which should be pretty low gravity anyway.

[eddnix]

Thanks fellas, some ideas to be mulling over for the next brew.