What do you guys typically have for a boil-off rate per hour?
I know this depends on several factors, mostly on how vigorous the boil is and the surface area of the kettle...
I started with a little over 7gal yesterday. After a 60 minute boil and chiller/cooling loss ended up with 4.5gal in the fermenter. Kettle trub loss was quite minimal due to the hop basket.
I ended up boiling off almost 2gal gal in one hour. I did have one spill over but that shouldn't account for much of that 2 Gal..
Even with a very hard boil, 2gal/hour seems way too high?! My kettle is only a 9Gal OBK one so the surface area isn't that big..
I get 4 litres/hr with a gentle boil. You'll get 4% shrinkage due to cooling too. So, if you had the same boil off rate as me, that's 7 gal to start - 1 gal boil off - 4% = 5.64
You gain almost nothing from a vigorous boil, in my opinion.
I was conditioning my 10 g aluminum kettle and boiled off 7L of water in an hour on Monday. I remember reading somewhere that if it is windy you'll get a higher boil off. Beersmith has a dilution tool that you can use to determine the top amount of water to add. If I boil off too much I would just add some bottled water to bring it back up
That's a great idea. I've never thought of that before.
I also do that when I overshoot too much my gravity. The dilution tool is another great tool in beersmith
Man, you guys and your beersmith tools ... I'm not even sure I own a hydrometer