Make up for low efficiency with more grain?

Rusty Shacklefood

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Hi, I haven't got enough heat on my stove to boil wort down as much as I'd like to, particularly in high gravity beers. Not without a three hour boil at least! Is it common sense to make up for it by adding extra grain to the mash?

I'll buy a boiler one day!
 
You can use the no sparge method, so you only use the first runnings from the mash. It’s not very efficient, 50-60% or so, but you can get a higher gravity wort for the boil. Some people will sparge the mash after collecting for the high gravity beer and use the sparge portion for a session/low gravity beer.
 
Hi, I haven't got enough heat on my stove to boil wort down as much as I'd like to, particularly in high gravity beers. Not without a three hour boil at least! Is it common sense to make up for it by adding extra grain to the mash?

I'll buy a boiler one day!
Use DME. Best way I can think of to increase gravity without increasing volume. If you want to thin the body of the beer, use sugar. Extra grain - the essence of the no-sparge comment above - will work as well as long as you don't get your mash too thick (under about 1.25 qt/lb). Key is getting more fermentable sugar into a more concentrated wort. It's easy to add boiled, cooled water if you overshoot!
 
Just enter whatever volume you boil off in an hour into your equipment profile to replace the existing boiloff you have entered. Done! The calculations will adjust everything else to come up with the same gravity and volume at the end of the boil. The only thing that will be different is utilization for hops used in the boil. Increase your bittering addition by 5 to10% and adjust as needed for subsequent batches.
This is predicated on the software doing proper calculations, of course.

I use a very slow boil by choice and only boil off 3 quarts per hour. I hit my numbers within a point or 2 consistently.
 
I don't see the actual question directly answered so, yes you can just add more grain to make up for low efficiency if you have room for it.

I do it all the time depending on how I'm mashing.
 
Why the slow boil? Is it to help hit your numbers more easily?

I'd read that here's really no need for a vigorous boil. I use an electric boiler and can control the vigor much more easily than when using propane, so tried a barley rolling boil. It produced good results, so I stuck with it.
 
I'd read that here's really no need for a vigorous boil. I use an electric boiler and can control the vigor much more easily than when using propane, so tried a barley rolling boil. It produced good results, so I stuck with it.
Good to know as I'll be going down the electric route. Does it take long to boil, and how much do you boil?
 

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