Pre Boil Gravity is low

GFrank · 02-25-2009, 08:27 PM

Hi all
I am brewing a Ginness clone, My pre boil gravity should be 1.041
I came in at 1.030.
ca I add some DME to boil and if so how much
I doing a 5gal all grain batch

Thanks

jgln · 02-25-2009, 08:45 PM

Since it sounds like you have done your best to mash and are ready to boil you are probably looking for fast advice even though I would rather leave it to the others for that. But I will tell you what I would do. Do as you say until I got the SG I was wanting or just decide on a brewing a lower SG beer this time. You do know after the boil it will increase depending how much you boil off, right?

GFrank · 02-25-2009, 08:48 PM

Yes I just added my hops,
And will go with a lower gravity brew. Since I dont know the quantity of DME to add to boil kettel
Thanks for the help.

Parker36 · 02-25-2009, 08:51 PM

What kind of DME do you have? 1.5lbs of Light DME should add about .012 to your starting gravity according to beersmith. You can do a late extract addition (with 15min to go in the boil)

GFrank · 02-25-2009, 08:53 PM

I have 1lb of DME10B.
I am 15 min into 60 min boil

jgln · 02-25-2009, 09:05 PM

I would have added it before the boil just because I hate putting the hydrometer in boiling wort, probably wouldn't crack if you warm it up first but I don't want to give advice on doing that. What the hell, throw it in if you want a higher SG or just go with what you got. You can check it later to see what you got. My thought was add until you got what you wanted rather than trying to calculate what you need. You have a decision to make but do it soon.

Parker36 · 02-25-2009, 09:09 PM

Throw it in there with 15min to go. A pound of DME should bring you up .008 pints which is pretty reasonable (in the end you would only be off 003 points or something like that)

GFrank · 02-25-2009, 09:15 PM

Yea thats what im going to do.
Thanks for the help