Missed OG by 20 points?

Hey Howdy-

So a while back in this thread I posted about a wit that I wanted to brew, and I finally came up with a recipe I liked and brewed it. Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
------------
Amount Item Type % or IBU
1.00 lb Rice Hulls (0.0 SRM) Adjunct 9.5 %
4.50 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 42.9 %
4.50 lb Wheat, Flaked (1.6 SRM) Grain 42.9 %
0.50 lb Oats, Flaked (1.0 SRM) Grain 4.8 %
0.75 oz Saaz [4.00%] (60 min) Hops 10.8 IBU
0.50 oz Saaz [4.00%] (15 min) Hops 3.6 IBU
0.07 oz Seeds of Paradise (Boil 10.0 min) Misc
0.75 oz Orange Peel, Bitter (Boil 15.0 min) Misc
1.00 oz Coriander Seed (Boil 15.0 min) Misc
1 Pkgs Belgian Wit Ale (White Labs #WLP400) Yeast-Wheat

The Seeds o' Paradise were .07oz, because that's the qty my LHBS sold them in. I've never used them before but after I crushed them up, they smelled great.

SO brewday was a while back, and it was a really nice, event free brewday, up until the point when I took my gravity. It was supposed to be 1.051, and My reading was 1.032.

I'm not sure exactly what happened, but it was a single infusion mash, about 153F for an hour. Water was measured properly, and I soaked my hulls in hot water before mash-in.

The final product is tasty, but is definitely lacking something. (About 20 points of something).

Any advice? Thanks in advance.

My guess would be that the pale malt didn't have enough diastatic power to convert all of the starches in the adjunct hence leading to a lower efficiency. Another possibly is that the wheat gummed up you mash to the point that when running off and sparging, the water channeled through the grain bed and had a tough time rinsing the grains.

We had this problem too. There are a few things that could have happened in addition to @wonderbread23's comments.

Get a second thermometer. Speaking from experience of missing gravities, found out that the thermo was 10 degrees off and it killed our efficiency.

Second idea is your grist. How did the pale look?? Was it cracked really well?? Uncracked grain can have quite a negative affect on efficiency.

Other thought too, is it looked like a 5 gallon batch. Did you finish with 5 gallons?? Did you over sparge??? 1 gallon of oversparge could drop you 15 points easily. Just some things to think about, and keep an eye on in the future.

Do you know what efficiency the recipe was calculated at and what you usually get on your system?

First off, thanks for getting back to me on this one.

It might be the case my wheat gummed up. I used a pound of rice hulls, but not sure if they were good and mixed in to the mash.

It doesn't look like I oversparged. I had about 6 1/2 (maybe a bit less) gallons when the boil started, and I ended with 5 in the fermenter when all was said and done. The grains looked good and crushed, my LHBS's mill is pretty legit.

Efficiency for my system is right about 72%, and I think this recipe might've been calculated around 75%.

I guess the bottom line is that it tastes good, and actually goes nicely with an orange, but it's a bit off from what I was looking for. Lesson learned right?

yessir, this is why we do what we do isnt it?? to learn from every batch and make better and better beer???

Next time you brew, use two thermos, I am curious to see if your mash temps are accrurate too.

No matter what happens, its still a beer

take a preboil gravity before you boil, that way you can adjust with dme or water if your off.