When I do something very hoppy, I get significant loss of wort from absorption by whole hop cones.
Even with squeezing out the hop material (which I've read you're not even supposed to do) I still lost, today for example, almost a litre once the hops sat in a strainer over an empty pot for an hour.
Usually I tweak a recipe to compensate, but when you're diluting, it can make a huge difference in OG, as well as just being wasteful.
Has anyone figured a way around this?
(...and almost more importantly:)
If I let the hops sit to drain on their own for an hour or two, can I add that to the fermenter or is that too great a risk of infection?
If you're using a lot of bittering hops you could switch to hop extract?
Well, for a 19L batch, I usually have about 22L in the boiler when I am about to transfer to the fermenter, at the correct OG. Targeting my recipe for the larger batch size means I hit my numbers for the quantity I need. To be honest though, I don't really care how much wort gets to the fermenter, as long as it's all good quality.
Quote from: molc on September 14, 2014, 10:06:37 PM
Well, for a 19L batch, I usually have about 22L in the boiler when I am about to transfer to the fermenter, at the correct OG. Targeting my recipe for the larger batch size means I hit my numbers for the quantity I need. To be honest though, I don't really care how much wort gets to the fermenter, as long as it's all good quality.
Thanks, but you missed the part about "partial boil."
A bit of extra Googling, though, suggests rising the hops with the top up water (http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/wort-loss-hop-absorption-160913/), so I think I'm good.
Thanks anyway,
Actually I partial boil too, but the recipes I use account for that and are balanced for 22l litres so I can fine tune og if needed.
when i was doing a partial boil i topped up the pot around to second half of the boil to counter the evaporation. I would litely squeeze the hops then rinse them and squeeze again.