First ever AG today. Gravity question.

I finally did my first AG today. Not much different than extract...the old cliche.."should have started sooner." Anyhow I have a question on my O.G. I brewed a simple English Bitter. Grain bill was 8 lbs. Pale Malt. .5 lb. 60L Crystal Malt. Lautered at 153 degrees for 1 hour. Mashed out at 170 for 10 minutes. Fly sparged with 160 degree water to 6 gallons in my brew kettle. I took a reading from my vorloff water it was 1.060(I let cool to 60 degrees before reading.) My 6 gallon preboil reading was 1.022. My boiled down to 5 gallon reading was 1.048. I was shooting for high .030 range. I am not really concerned, it is what it is. What may have gone wrong? Or does this sound right?

Something doesn't add up there - one of those gravities must be wrong. Looks like that recipe should give you something in the 1.044 to 1.048 range at 75% efficiency so I'm betting that's the correct one. Maybe your preboil reading wasn't well mixed and your sample was off the top with mostly final runnings? With 1.048 at 5 gal should be about 1.040 at 6 gallons.

Thanks for the reply. I pulled the preboil sample off the top of the brew kettle. That would make sense it was final runnings. I was shocked when it was only .022 then rebounded to .048. Anyhow I am very pleased with the whole brew and can't wait to see how it ends up tasting.

Try using this chart on your first runnings, it will let you know right away how well you converted in the mash:
http://www.braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=File:First_wort_gravity.gif

Then if you get wonky readings you can look for downstream problems (sparge, equipment error, etc.)

michaellifts said:

My 6 gallon preboil reading was 1.022. My boiled down to 5 gallon reading was 1.048.

Click to expand...

Did you adjust for the temperature that your hydrometer was calibrated for?

A hydrometer calibrated for 60F and measuring a SG of 1.044 would read 1.022 at 160F.