I’ve seen different opinions on starting points regarding water. Do you start your brewing with 2, 2.5, or 3 gallons of water? I’ve seen different amounts for different extract kits from different companies. I’ve been using 2.5 gallons but with the amount of boil off, I was wondering it 3.0 would have an effect on the outcome of the beer.
I’d use as much as you can, the volume of water you use in your boil is usually constrained by how big your boil kettle is. Pretty quickly into brewing I got a big kettle and a propane burner so that I could boil the full volume of water. (started with 6 gallons, after boil it was ~5 gallons)
I have a 5 gal pot so I always try to end up with 4 gal at the start of boil knowing i will lose 1/2 gal to boil off. So if I am adding 6 lbs of lme I will start with 3.5 gal of water, this give 3.5 gal water + 1/2 gal lme = 4 gal boil 60 min 3.5 gal wort and top off 5 gal in carboy. I tried to get 4 gal as the finnishing point with a kit that used all dme and had a massive boil over that took 4 hours to clean so that SHMBO would let me keep brewing. No fun would rather all a little more water post boil then clean that again. :shock: Cheers
