So I figured out why I'm not hitting my OG ...

This might turn into a rant so I apologize in advance.

I'm an extract brewer doing partial boils. I've been using the markings on my plastic bucket to add water to reach 5 gallons. However I've always come a little under what I expected for gravity. I've only done 3 brews so far so I just brushed it off as poor efficiency (from steeped grains) so something else related to inexperience.

I brewed last night and realized that the markings on the bucket are in IMPERIAL gallons. 5 imperial gallons = 6 US gallons (approx). After I plugged that into my calculator, all of my numbers all match up -- even for previous brews!



So now I'm thinking it's time to just go all metric. There's only one type of litre and gram. Plus, I won't have to convert from ounces to pounds (i.e. divide by 16 to get it into decimal notation) -- just move the decimal point to go from g to kg.

Goodbye gallons, ounces, lovibond, SG -- hello litres, grams, EBC, Plato!!

:rockin:

It is confusing isn't it? Took me a couple of brews to work out that you have to be veeery careful to work out where the recipe got posted from to decide which measurements the recipe used!

I've gone metric for that reason too. Pet theory is that the reason US craft brews are on the whole a bit stronger than UK cask ales is a similar mix up. What if US homebrewers and craft brewers back in the day took initial inspiration from English language UK recipes, adapted to US ingredients, working to US smaller pint sizes and bottle sizes, produced good strong beers that found appreciative audiences, set the trend we see today...?

Also, US or metric, those markings can be off by a s***load. Recommend taking the time to put your own markings on them.

unionrdr said:

Perhaps so,but it seems they also use more grains to add complexity,color,etc. ...!

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That might fit the theory too. Maris Otter is sometimes seen almost as a speciality grain on here, bit more character it seems, so brewers use other darker grains in addition to easily available paler malts made to the specs of the big lager brewers to get a bit more character.

Adapting available ingredients... out of that you then have a new tradition of recipes that take more complex grain bills as read.

Of course, mere speculation and theorising

Metric system for the win!!!

unionrdr said:

...& the 23L mark on my Cooper's fermenter is 6.072 US gallons. I went to sciencemadesimple.com for some conversion formulas. Where did your fermenter come from that it's marked in imperial gallons?

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The pail came from a friend who inherited it from his dad. So I'm not sure where it came from. He also lent me a glass carboy that I took some time to mark myself. The one brew I did in that turned out closer to what I expected.

I should have known to double check for Imperial vs. US measurements though. Man, as a Canadian it's sometime confusing trying to measure stuff. As a commonwealth nation we have lots of British leftovers, a huge influence from the US, and then our "official" adoption of metric. We are, what I've heard called, "metrish".

straylight77 said:

The pail came from a friend who inherited it from his dad. So I'm not sure where it came from. He also lent me a glass carboy that I took some time to mark myself. The one brew I did in that turned out closer to what I expected.

I should have known to double check for Imperial vs. US measurements though. Man, as a Canadian it's sometime confusing trying to measure stuff. As a commonwealth nation we have lots of British leftovers, a huge influence from the US, and then our "official" adoption of metric. We are, what I've heard called, "metrish".

Click to expand...

It's no clearer over here. You'll find stuff expressed to European standards, like a car's fuel consumption in km/l, so petrol pumps are in litres. But distances are in miles on signposts, so you'll do the sums in your head to get mpg. You buy beer in the pub in pints, but bottles of beer in millilitres. People's heights are always in feet and inches and weights in stones, anything you buy will be in metres and in kg though.

My generation all learned metric at school, but of course all adults worked in imperial measurements so you spoke imperial at home, doing the rough rules of thumb in your head.

There's a German brewpub in Glasgow that got threatened with legal action for serving beer by 500ml not by the pint. They were only trying to comply with the law that said measurements should be metric