Help With Boil Times, Please Help?!

[Brewer #457861]

I've done 5-6 batches with Brewer's Friend with excellent success. HOWEVER: I have a recipe. I brewed it yesterday but I kinda botched it as doofus didn't see that it required a 90 minute boil! I "fixed" it with a corn sugar addition just to get the ABV in the final wort close to that of the longer boil.

HOW can I compare recipes with a 60 minute boil, same OG, predicted Gravities, etc. with a 90 minute boil. The number keep coming up the same for me and I can't get it to happen. Seems to me that a 60 should have a far weaker concentration of sugars than a 90?

Some brilliant Brewer's Friend Maven is gonna save the day? Fingers crossed.

THANK YOU!
Todd

 

[HighVoltageMan!]

You would need to know your boil off rate. The calculator does not use the boil time as a means to calculate the starting/finish boil gravity. If you know your boil off rate, you will know the proper starting volume of wort to hit your target gravity in 60 minutes. If you are brewing all grain, then you would need to hit the starting boil gravity and volume perfectly. I know when I brew, my volumes and gravities vary enough to cause me to change boil times. I usually don't worry if I have a 60 minute hop addition and it goes longer because the alpha acid isomerization doesn't increase after 60 minutes. Some say it actually decreases slightly past 60 minutes.

I personally have the opposite problem and have to add water to the boil to reduce gravity. By adding sugar, you change the recipe and the beer. Patience is necessary sometimes, because the boil needs to be extended to hit the target gravity. It's best to boil for gravity rather than volume.

 

[Minbari]

60 or 90, mainly hop utilization and gravity. You can shorten it to 60 by changing the hop schedule and boil with less water to hit your gravity.

 

[Brewer #457861]

Thank you for your thoughtful responses. Let me clarify and if there's no way, there's no way. I guess it's cause I created a "what if" scenario. Bottom line is I misread a recipe that had no calculator but using X Lbs of grain to Y Gals of water the author wanted X and Y to be boiled 90 minutes and I only boiled 60 (as I'm a creature of numb actions) minutes. I wound up with a "thin" wort by a bit. Shoulda been 1.045 and I came out with 1.034. Now I SHOULDA put the stuff BACK into the kettle and let it rip another 30 minutes. Instead, I was mentally exhausted and gave up... I did some quick calculations, boiled some corn sugar with a cup of water, and reached my desired OG. This is a BEYOND odd/rare situation and no one can blame the software for not having a "oops I shoulda boiled the same amount of stuff for longer" Tool for TOOLS?!?!

Anywho, it's bubbling away nicely, from what I can grasp from the airlock, it's smelling very nice so far. Again, I do appreciate you all for being kind and thoughtful.

Cheers,
Todd

 

[Dave Y]

I take you are using Brewer's Friend for recipe building/modification/tracking?

Right side ; recipe editing tool.

 

[Craigerrr]

It won't turn out just how it was intended, but it will still be beer.
Brew, learn, repeat!
Oh, and drink your mistakes, if you can!

 

[J A]

Most new brewers look at a beer recipe as if it's a cake recipe: specific quantities of ingredients treated in a prescribed manner. You can pretty much do that with extract brewing but with all-grain brewing you have to plug all your system variables into the calculator and adjust quantities as needed.
If your conversion efficiency is different from what's in the recipe, your grain quantities have to reflect that. If your boil-off rate is different for whatever reason, you have to adjust you mash volume.
Just set up an default equipment profile that works consistently with your set-up and plug all ingredients into the calculator based on that. Then you can tweak amounts as needed to match the desired OG, FG, IBUs etc.

 

[Zambi]

It will turn out a bit different, but it will be beer!
And who knows, you might like ot better than the version without the added sugar

 

[Donoroto]

using X Lbs of grain to Y Gals of water the author wanted X and Y to be boiled 90 minutes and I only boiled 60 (as I'm a creature of numb actions) minutes.

Typically, grain is not boiled. Did you do that?

 

[J A]

Typically, grain is not boiled. Did you do that?

OP mentions doing 5 or 6 batches with success...It seems like he probably has a handle on the basic process.

 

[Donoroto]

I can only speculate.

 

[Brewer #457861]

I have used The Friend several times. Thing is, a “what if?” scenario is intriguing to me but a .000001% of the beer brewing population would have any interest. NOTE TO ME: Read the instructions THREE times before brewing.

An NO I didn't not boil the grains. Sorry to disappoint. I'm a bit numb but not a total jackass. I did toast the hops for 2:30 in a 550º F oven before brewing tho...

 

[Dave Y]

Read the instructions THREE times before brewing.

Always remember the Brewer's Friend creed:

1) Measure Twice
2) Cut once.
3) Blame @Bigbre04 when it all goes to ****.

 

[Bigbre04]

Always remember the Brewer's Friend creed:

1) Measure Twice
2) Cut once.
3) Blame @Bigbre04 when it all goes to ****.

Im @Bigbre04 I endorse this message!

#beefin'

 

[BarbarianBrewer]

HOW can I compare recipes with a 60 minute boil, same OG, predicted Gravities, etc. with a 90 minute boil. The number keep coming up the same for me and I can't get it to happen. Seems to me that a 60 should have a far weaker concentration of sugars than a 90?

You're right, the calculator doesn't change OG based on boil time. What it does do is change the required pre-boil volume (if you have the 'Auto' boxes checked and have your boil-off set in your equipment profile). In that case when you change the boil time your pre-boil size will change. It assumes you will always reach your target batch size.

To accomplish what I think you are looking for, you could change the batch size to what ever volume actually you wound up at, even if it wouldn't all fit into the fermenter. For example, if your boil-off rate is 1 gal/hr then you would boil off 1.5 gallons in 90 minutes. To see the effect of changing from a 90 min to a 60 min boil, just add 1/2 gallon to your batch size. That will show you what your new OG would be in that scenario.

 

[Craigerrr]

I have used The Friend several times. Thing is, a “what if?” scenario is intriguing to me but a .000001% of the beer brewing population would have any interest. NOTE TO ME: Read the instructions THREE times before brewing.

An NO I didn't not boil the grains. Sorry to disappoint. I'm a bit numb but not a total jackass. I did toast the hops for 2:30 in a 550º F oven before brewing tho...

View attachment 33272

Nice selfie!

 

[Donoroto]

I have used The Friend several times. Thing is, a “what if?” scenario is intriguing to me but a .000001% of the beer brewing population would have any interest. NOTE TO ME: Read the instructions THREE times before brewing.

An NO I didn't not boil the grains. Sorry to disappoint. I'm a bit numb but not a total jackass. I did toast the hops for 2:30 in a 550º F oven before brewing tho...

View attachment 33272

I mean, I did not think so, but the quoted text seemed to say you did.

Anyway: 60 minutes only means less water boiled away than 90 minutes. The sugar stays the same, but is a bit more diluted. The only possible concern is longer boiling will affect hops utilization and bitterness, but as HVMan said, hops are fully isomerized into bitterness by 60 minutes, so the only effect would be for those that were in there for less time.

I think you recovered nicely, and the beer will be fine. Boiling longer would have messed with hops.