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How to keep boil off volume consistent

babychef

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I would like some advice on keeping boil off volume consistent. I just brewed a lager, and the boil off volume was much larger than I anticipated. My guess is that it boiled more vigorously than previous batches. As such, I had to add a large amount of water to the fermenter. The OG was way off.

How do you keep your boil off rate consistent? How can you be sure you are not boiling more, or less, vigorously than expected? This seems to be especially difficult with my BIAB setup. Since I like to use my BIAB bag as my hop bag, the bag frequently floats above any areas that are bubbling.
 
With all of the variables that affect boil off, it's close to impossible to pin it down. While I don't spend much time worrying about it, I suppose if you tracked ambient temperature, relative humidity, barometric pressure over a long period of time and found away to have absolute control of your heat source, you could get closer than you are, but doubt it would be worth the trouble. Concentrating on the variables you can control is about as good as it gets. Control your heat source.

I like to get a little more boil off than normally expected and just top off post boil to compensate.
 
What BOB257 said!  If you are using a propane burner, it really comes down to training your eye to identify the vigorousness (is that even a word?) of the boil and adjusting the burner rate to achieve what looks like the same action each time.  I've switched to doing mostly 90 minute boils so that I can make adjustments before adding my hops at 60 minutes left in the boil. (well for other reasons as well, but it helps...)
 
I'm building a HERM's system.  I put a temperature probe on my boil pot, so that I can monitor the temperature of my boiling wort.  I have to reconfigure all of my volumes anyhow for this new system, so once I bet the vigorousness that I want, I'll pay attention to the temperature of the boiling wort.  As I get it dialed in, I can try to maintain my boil to that temperature and it should give me more consistent boil off rates.  In theory.
 
That tootsie roll stout sounds amazing! Did it really need to be aged 2 years?
 
Yes.  The first competition when it was 6 months old, it scored 11 and was said to be contaminated.  Had a turpentine flavor.  After two years, it scored 39 and took first in the stout category.
 
Scott Ickes said:
I'm building a HERM's system.  I put a temperature probe on my boil pot, so that I can monitor the temperature of my boiling wort.  I have to reconfigure all of my volumes anyhow for this new system, so once I bet the vigorousness that I want, I'll pay attention to the temperature of the boiling wort.  As I get it dialed in, I can try to maintain my boil to that temperature and it should give me more consistent boil off rates.  In theory.

Water is going to boil at 100C / 212F at sea level, standard pressure no matter how hard you boil it.

What I do for consistency is once it gets to a boil, I turn the boil kettle controller to 85% (I use a PID/SSR so 85% of the time it's on full power, 15% off) until the hot break is done (I manually cycle on/off until it breaks)

Then based on ambient I dial it back to 60-65%. I check the level every 15 minutes, and will adjust up or down a couple percent if it's way off from the estimated boil off at that time.
 
I use a propane burner outside and windy days are tricky.  Lately, I've been treating the boil like heating strike water.  Slowly arriving at boiling temps.
 
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