Missed O.G. Question with Extract + Grains Recipe

[blair.streit]

Thanks Blair.

Nope, didn’t leave anything in the kettle. May have boiled a bit vigorously but not anything more than I have in the past. It was cool with a low dew point and humidity outside.

I’m going to start watching boil-off a little closer the next few batches, adjusting as necessary with boil rate, time, etc. Had I cut the boil off short of 60 minutes in this case once I hit 1.045 or so, would I expect any issues with not boiling the full 60 as typically recommended? Is boil time more important than the targeted S.G. or vice-versa?

I do recommend dialing this in a bit, as you will change the flavor of your beer by changing the intensity of the boil and/or changing the amount of time you boil. Humidity and other variables might force you to change this a bit in some conditions, but for the most part I can get mine pretty consistent now. Here’s another calculator that just focuses on boiloff and dilution.

Dilution And Boiloff Gravity Calculator - Brewer's Friend

Here’s a great excerpt from an older thread on this topic:

@wfaris

One thing to keep in mind that for a given kettle and a consistent intensity of boil, you will boil off very close to the same volume per hour every time regardless of the actual volume of wort you start with.  In other words, if your boil off rate is one gallon per hour for your kettle (a pretty normal rate for a lot of folks) you will boil off that same amount whether you start with 5 gallons or 25 gallons in that kettle.

https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=3187.msg36031#msg36031

Question using the calculator you pointed me to: until I make the move to all grain, is there an efficiency that should be “dialed in” for extract w/grain brews?

You don’t have to worry about extract efficiency with LME or DME, so this would only be applicable to the small amount of steeping grains you add. I’d guess 65% would be a conservative estimate here, but at such a small amount I think the OG difference between assuming 55% and 85% would be negligible.