to much wort

[Vallka]

Hi I'm new to brewing, have finish a batch and it turned out good, Bitter Like Me, Have another that is 16 days in (J. Ripper Brown Ale) and just brewed today (Poison Ivy Amber Ale). Batch size was 6 Gal (23L) Total water is just under 9 gal (33L) Boil size was to be 7Gal (27.33L) I ended up collecting more from the mash than expected and have a wort of 7Gal (28L) after boiling for 60 min ..................gravitys are down Per-Boil was 1.060 Post -Boil 1.034 and OG came out at 1.041(expected OG was 1.049).
I'm not to worried about a lower ABV but what did I do wrong.................should I have just stopped the sparge at the 7Gal Boil size?

 

[Mark D Pirate]

Your gravity readings are off my friend ,gravity of first runnings 1.060 sounds about right , preboil of 1.034 is possible to get an original gravity of 1.041 .
it will take time to dial in your system and predict exactly how much water to use to hit your expect boil and batch volumes .
i have found the water calc on here is pretty well spot on as long as you input correct values , i ran my system with just water to measure actual boil off and deadspace then started with default values for grain and hop absorption and tweaked from there

 

[J A]

Calculate your grain absorption rate. It's usually .25 to .35 quart per lb of grain. Add that to any losses that you know exist in your tun deadspace, etc. Add all that to your desired pre-boil volume to get total water volume. For a .049 beer you're probably using less than 10 lbs of grain so 2-3 quarts would be expected from absorption unless you have really big losses in your system, 9 gallons is just too much.
Yes, you could have stopped running sparge and come out with closer to your target OG. If you want to be thrifty, that leftover sparge can make low-gravity wort for starters. I tend to save those late runnings for that.