My last two batches I made I ran into a problem. The biggest problem is not checking my boil off rate. That’s the big lesson for me. Check your boil off rates whenever something changes. In my apartment with an electric range my 2gal kettle boiled off .5gal per hour. Using the same pot but on the gas range at my house I seem to be boiling off less. This makes me miss gravity at times. The other problem I ran into is no clear markings for volume on my fermenting vessel. I knew I was low on my OG but didn’t know how far over my volume was. I have a Belgain Tripel that should finish well over 8% ABV but instead won’t hit 7% ABV. Today I am sitting here checking boil off rates for my new and old 2gal kettle and my new 4gal kettle.

The lack of graduations on my fermenter has me searching for a possible solution. Until now I have been filling a 5gal tub with water/star-san and putting everything in that to soak. While bottling I don’t do that, I load a spray bottle with sanitizer solution and just spray the inside of the bottles. I think Im going to make less solution and just spray the inside of my fermenter. I want to mark my fermenters with graduations so I know where “full” is but submerging the fermenters would rub off the markings I think so I needed a different way to sanitize things. This should also lead to less solution being made which should save on water and concentrate.