Fresh Hops and water retention..

[Espi]

Quick question...

I brewed an off the cuff batch with some friends this weekend. Hit all my temps and my pre boil volume.

At the end of the boil we were way low.

The only change was that we used fresh hops...

I am guessing they soaked up a bunch of water.

How do you guys go about this? Change your sparge volume or just add water at the end to get to the level you want?

We just let it go and pitched..

 

[david_42]

Odd, I always end up with extra wort. Fresh hops are 85% water, as opposed to dried hops that are 10-15%.

 

[buzzkill]

"We just let it go and pitched"....... this is how I do it. I once made a 6 gal brew with about 9 oz. of flower hops. I I only got about 3gal into carboy.

if I want 10 gals in fermenter,I plan for at least 11 gals. sometimes 12(post boil).. this way I never come up short. unless its just a crazy hop bill.

(were they dry?) never used wet hops before.

 

[Espi]

meh should have been a bit clearer...

I boil off pretty much exactly one gallon during an hour boil.. so I shoot for 6.5 gallons in the boil kettle. I usually use pellet hops and have always been pretty much spot on to end up with about 5.5 gallons in the fermenter.

With this batch, I was right at 6.5 in the boil kettle.. with 4 oz of fresh cascade added.

It was dried and vacuum packed.

It ended up being around 4.5 gallons into the carboy...

oh and we strained off the hops going into the carboy as well...