Question re Wort Dilution

[Mall]

This has probably been covered but, i tend to do double AG batches, always IPA's and have a question re dilution.

I use Brewer's Friend for my calcs and say for eg., 10kg of grain calls for 30L of infusion water and 30L to sparge; this leaves 49L or so to the boil kettle. My kettle is 50L and during the boil I need to keep an eagle eye for boil overs and not really getting a good rolling boil (for fear of boilovers).

So the question, just use less water, say 28L & 28L which means less into kettle but give a higher OG and then dilute post boil?

 

[barls]

you can do that your efficiency might suffer a tiny bit but i don't think you would notice greatly.
as for the boil overs look at an anti foam. i really like foamsol and am currently using the five star one with good success.

 

[manticle]

Or top up during the boil

 

[MHB]

Apart from the obvious (get a bigger kettle), which would make your life a lot easier and a good boil will make your beer taste better.
There a couple of other options, like reducing your batch size 5L or so.

If you want to persist with the current arrangement I would be more inclined to reduce the sparge water than the mash water.
You are only mashing at 3:1 as it stands, reducing the L:G will favor non-fermentable worts and can change the taste/body of the beer. Reducing the sparge water can be compensated for by sparging slower, or by doing a couple of smaller batch sparges.
Mark

 

[Mall]

That makes sense, thankyou all for the advice.

 

[Danscraftbeer]

I batch sparge. Bring each run off to a boil. You can boil hard too. This reduces by evaporation and reduces the hot break/frothing simply because its divided hot breaks rather than one big hot break. It may take more time but I'm in no rush when brewing. If you boil hard then you can only guess how much the pre boil volume is larger than your pot capacity. This ups your efficiency too. But your boiling for longer. I start my boil timer when my keggle is filled to one inch of the brim. 55l. for a 40lt batch size with 4lt trub left. So my boil off evaporation is well over 11 litres.
Although it means your early run off malt goes through a long time boiling. Not that that's a bad thing.