Over Boiled Wort

[ledgenko]

Hey Guys and Gals ...

I had a bit of a whoopsie yesterday whilst boiling out wort.. I made my first WA AG (4.5 kg aussie Pils, 2 kg Cara munich and a 60min addition of 45gm Fuggles), but had to drop the boy off at footy trg .. normally a 15 min job so left the beer to do its thing and boil away ... anyway .. ended up being a 2 hr boil .. vol dropped from 25 lt to 12 lt of wort .. smelt awesome and roasted when I arrived home .. I also had another brew going - 5 kg Aussie Pils, 1 kg of Crystal with 500gm brown sugar and a 45gm addition of Fuggles (started similar time) going in other Kettle (25lt brew) .. anyay I quickly cubed the beers and have had them sitting in cubes over night ( I blended the two to bring it to 2 x 15lt cubes - 1 of second recipe alone and the other a blend of the two)..

I have some liquid yeatss that have just arrived from Adelaide (Yay for Nigel - thanks for the pressie mate) a Abbey ale and a Burtons ale... which should I use on these brews or am I going to destroy them with the blend of very, very concentrated wort?


Thanks for your advice in advance

Matt :drinks:

 

[felten]

whats the OG? You might want to water it down if it's too high

also wow, that is a massive amount of crystal, 30% caramunich.

 

[b_thomas]

If the wort is concentrated should just be a simple matter of adding water to dilute.

I doubt you're going to destroy your yeast by adding them in however you might find they may not convert all the sugar and you'll end up with a dessert beer

If you don't dilute the Abbey Ale would do a better job than the Burton

 

[Frag_Dog]

Won't the bitterness jack right up as a result of boiling that long? Or is the increase in bitterness in relation to boil-off losses?

 

[Gormand]

Bitterness will be interesting on a 2 hour boil Imagine. But yeah as all you have boiled away is water you can just water it down, really you have just made a thin cube of goo

If you dont water it down the ABV may end up too high for your yeast (People with more knowledge then me can figure that out) so you may need to water it down at least a little for your yeast to handle it. But if you dont your going to have a nice big deadly beer I think.

 

[bignath]

Won't the bitterness jack right up as a result of boiling that long? Or is the increase in bitterness in relation to boil-off losses?

It will obviously be more bitter than a 1 hour boil for sure, but bitterness isn't like a linear scale, it's probably more like a bell curve.

If you put in a bittering addition into some brewing software, and keep increasing the time, the bitterness increase starts slowing down very quickly after an hour. Beersmith is good for this, as it has a button that allows you to keep increasing or decreasing the time in 5min increments.

 

[beerdrinkingbob]

+1 for BN

To give you an example a 38 IBU 60 minute addition will only rise to 42 IBU's if you boil it for the extra hour, certainly not a way of saving money....

OP good job on creating you tin of goo, like other posters have suggested you might want to water that one down, you probably have a gravity of 1.080 to 1.100, definitely not a lawn mower beer!!

 

[ledgenko]

Thanks guys.. It does smell awesome!! I am going to add 5lt of water to both cubes once in the fermenter .. Although the caramunich one is sooo tempting to leave as a big beer and drop the abbey ale on it and see what happens;-) ? I do love a big beer and was planning on doing a big stout soon so this may give me a new medium! I tend to use a bit of extreme qty of spec grains in my beers as I am in love with the mouth feel and flavours.. One of my gave beers has 2 kg of spec grain Inc choc, spec blend crystal and Rye.. Comes up a treat on 5 kg of pale ale malt..

I will update on how it turns out!! I will do a few bottles and keg the rest..

Thanks for the advice and support.. Thought I had totally f'ed it!!

Matt

 

[manticle]

I'm still curious about why you're adding so much crystal malt to your brews (in both circumstances).

 

[ledgenko]

Ok .. so I decided to drop both into seperate fermenters and see how the beer pulls up .. OG is 1070 for the Caramunich on Pils and 1075 for the Crystal on Pils.. put an additional 2 lt water on both .. hell just to see what happens ...

Manticle .. I had a couple of small bags of spec grain which I started doing 300gm lots of and then for some unknown reason said F ck it .. and dropped in the grain.. A few of my recipes have large spec grain qty in the mix and work out a treat ..

SWMBO was the motivator to just drop these into a fermenter.. Sometime great things are found through mistakes

I am going to see how these go .. I like big beers and enjoy sharing them more .. so if it works out ok I will post complete recipe ( I do ack that the majority of the recipe is already on here !! )

Happy for further discussion on qty of spec grain and use of first runnings!!

Matt