Missed OG - Is that bad?

All,

I had a recipe that Beersmith pegged as a SG of 1.070. It also stated that it was estimated at 9.5% abv. I went to the lhbs on Saturday and gave them the ingredients and asked them if I needed to pitch two yeasts because of the FG to be on the safe side. The guy immediately said "that's not a 9.5% beer". He did some calculations and it came out to about 5.5%.

I went ahead and brewed the recipe today, but I came out with a 1.050 as an FG, so I figure that's going to be about a 5.5% beer. Is missing the FG bad, or how in the world did Beersmith come out with that high of alcohol content when it was clearly wrong?

Grains used:

11.5 lbs 2 Row
1.5 lbs Munich malt
.5 lbs carapils
.5 lbs crystal 60

Thanks!

It all depends on what efficiency you normally get. For my setup, that amount of grains in a 5 gallon batch is estimated to get me an OG of 1.079 which is higher than Beersmith estimated. Your efficiency will depend on the equipment you use, your technique, and mostly the quality of the crush. Your LHBS knows how they crush so they had a very good idea of the efficiency you would get.

To answer your question, no it's not bad. Your brew will still be beer, albeit less strong, but beer all the same. The only negative would be if you were brewing a particular style for a competition or something and you missed the target gravity by that much.

RDWHAHB

If I were to wager a guess, I'd check to make sure it wasn't calculating for a 3 gallon batch or something. The amount of water in beer smith (or lack there of) would account for a high OG.

Thanks everyone! It was definitely for a 5 gallon batch, so I'm not sure how it's off. It also seems like it was the first time in the last 5 beers that was off, but the interesting thing is that this time I was using someone elses recipe. We'll see how it goes

A mistake I used to make was leaving it in extract while adding grain to the bill for all grain and wondering why the hell the predicted OG was so low... :/

Sent from my super rad tablet device thingy.

kenpotf said:

Thanks everyone! It was definitely for a 5 gallon batch, so I'm not sure how it's off. It also seems like it was the first time in the last 5 beers that was off, but the interesting thing is that this time I was using someone elses recipe. We'll see how it goes

Click to expand...

Enter all the grains in Beersmith again and see what it shows for an OG, then start changing the expected efficiency until you get the expected OG down to the 1.050. Now you will know that efficiency that you got and what Beersmith thinks you could have gotten too. The quality of the crush is usually the difference.

I've used BeerSmith for 3.5 years and it's usually spot on. If you're new to the program make sure your efficiency is set right. A good place to start is around 65, and if you copied one of the BS recipes there could be equipment set-up/and other values that would really mess things up.

Okay...I know this is a newbie question, but what is "efficiency" defined as in brewing? I've seen the term, but I've never studied it.