beerspitnight

Recipes 

Gents-
Brewed a Belgian PA today, recipe for the 10 gallon batch is below:

Pale 17.63 83%
Vienna 1.1 5%
CaraMunich 0.55 3%

also added in 2 lbs of invert at the start of the boil.

First pull reading was 1.065 - spot on. Last pull reading was 1.024. Forgot to grab a pre-boil reading.

Mashed for 60 min @ 156

Boiled for 60 min

Expected OG, based on CP's brewsheet thingy was 1.056 and we came in at 1.064. What could have caused our OG to be so significantly higher?
I am not upset about this, just wondering how it happened...

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Dirty City Brewing Collective
"American Beer with Socialist Characteristics"
Primary 1 - Year of the Snake Stout
Primary 2 - Liam's Celebration Rye Ale 2013
Keg 1 -American XXXXXIPA- Keg 2 -Honey Porter Keg 3 - Sanitizer
On Deck Black IPA -

FoundersBrew

Recipes 

I have the same question. I brewed Ed Worts pale ale and was about four points high.

Revvy

Recipes 

What was your post boil volume, i.e. the amount you put into the fermenter? Was this a top off in the fermenter batch, or a full volume boil?

One thing also to take in consideration, especially if your only a few points of, is that there might be a discrepency between the true extraction potential of your grain and the "theoretical" number that is used in our software, the reality is always there that your batch of grain that you mashed could be more or less able to convert for whatever reason.

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Revvy's one of the cool reverends. He has a Harley and a t-shirt that says on the back "If you can read this, the bitch was Raptured. - Madman

I gotta tell ya, just between us girls, that Revvy is HOT. Very tall, gorgeous grey hair and a terrific smile. He's very good looking in person, with a charismatic personality... he drives like a ****ing maniac! - YooperBrew

beerspitnight

Recipes 

Revvy-
Post boil volume was 10gal, or right there abouts (just a hair under the lower bolts, which is, from our calculations, 10 gallons...we are really scientific-like over here in the 'Jing!) And it was a full boil volume - no top offs.
Fair enough on the conversion aspect - again, I am not unhappy about being over on our OG, it is just going to be a stronger beer than we anticipated on making.
Every batch is a learning experience, although sometimes a bit of a drunken one!

__________________
Dirty City Brewing Collective
"American Beer with Socialist Characteristics"
Primary 1 - Year of the Snake Stout
Primary 2 - Liam's Celebration Rye Ale 2013
Keg 1 -American XXXXXIPA- Keg 2 -Honey Porter Keg 3 - Sanitizer
On Deck Black IPA -

Revvy

Recipes 

Another thing to consider is your efficiency vs what the efficiency of the software to create the recipe was set at.

I've always set mine for the default 75% in most brewing software, but I just got a new grainmill for my birthday, a barley crusher, and I'm still dialing my crush in, and I've been over shooting my almost all my gravities lately, because I'm getting a better crush than before. So I have to tweak my software efficicency a bit now.

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Like my snazzy new avatar? Get Sons of Zymurgy swag, here, and brew with the best.

Revvy's one of the cool reverends. He has a Harley and a t-shirt that says on the back "If you can read this, the bitch was Raptured. - Madman

I gotta tell ya, just between us girls, that Revvy is HOT. Very tall, gorgeous grey hair and a terrific smile. He's very good looking in person, with a charismatic personality... he drives like a ****ing maniac! - YooperBrew

burninmules

Recipes 

+1 on this. I am far from an expert on brewing but, I have recently started calculating my efficiency. I also just recently got Beersmith. I have been getting about 85% and thought this was too good to be true so, when i wrote my last recipe, I set it for 75%. I over shot my gravity by about ten points. Live and learn. I guess it will be a strong Irish ale.

FoundersBrew

Recipes 

This is kind of what I suspected. I set my efficiency to 75 and figured I must have got a little higher than expected.

ajf

Recipes 

Looks like you got about 80% efficiency, which is what I get with my current equipment. Hopefully, your efficiency will not vary very much from one brew to the next, in which case you can cut down on the malts a bit to achieve the required OG. If your efficiency does vary from one batch to the next, then you need to take careful notes and try to establish why this happens, and to adjust your procedures to eliminate the variations.

-a.

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beerspitnight

Recipes 

All good points. My only follow up question (at least for now) is that we hit the first and last pull gravity readings spot on as according to the chart - how can our final OG be so much higher then? Can we not assume that since those numbers were spot on according to the chart that our final numbers should also be reflective of the chart?
Thanks!

__________________
Dirty City Brewing Collective
"American Beer with Socialist Characteristics"
Primary 1 - Year of the Snake Stout
Primary 2 - Liam's Celebration Rye Ale 2013
Keg 1 -American XXXXXIPA- Keg 2 -Honey Porter Keg 3 - Sanitizer
On Deck Black IPA -

BrewKnurd

Recipes 

1) even if the gravities are spot on, if the volumes are different, the total gravity can vary.

2) your boil of rate will significantly impact your OG, so you could be spot on for preboil gravity and still be off on OG if you boiled off more or less than the recipe assumed.

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