Ever -totally- missed your OG with ok results?

I bought the winter warmer PM kit from Austin Homebrew Supply (great kit/ingredients btw). Was really psyched about this one but something went horribly wrong

OG suggested 1.072. Mine? 1.054. Fantastic.

I followed the directions to the T -except- I decided to do late extract addition. Adding 8 lbs. extra pale liquid extract at the end of the boil definitely slowed things down, and possible interfered with my last two hop additions. It took forever to get the boil going again and I don't think the 15 or 5 minute hops really boiled in at all.

When the wort was cooled, I didn't see any protein break and there was so much hop leafs floating around I could hardly siphon it up. No trub just a big mess of wort floating around.

As far as the mash goes, grain bag + stainless steel pot in the oven at 150 (mash 153) for 45 minutes...as per instructions. Proceeded to trickle 175f water over a strainer @ 1 quart per 2 lbs. grain afterwards. I probably should have gone an hour on the mash.

Bad, bad and bad. That sucked.

Is there a chance this will be drinkable?

My first attempt at a partial mash went much like your attempt here. The predicted OG was 1.075, but I only hit 1.064. My efficiency was a measly 42.5%! Still, the beer came out great, and has been praised by friends. I think you'll be just fine. It's usually no big deal if your original goal was a moderately big beer, since you're still within a decent beer range at 1.054. If you'd hit, say, 1.030 instead of a 1.050 target, your beer would probably be pretty weak and boring. I'd say RDWHAHB.

Thanks Torchiest I'm definitely gonna ride it out (I drink ANYTHING) but what do you think about 1" of hop leaves at the bottom of the boil kettle, doesn't that sound like something went really wrong?

There have been a few times where I have been almost 10 points off; one was my first crack at a wit, loads of unconverted starch and the other was well I think a combination of poor crush, too fast on the fly sparge and the fact I was teaching someone got me distracted. The wit turned out well and I was able to correct the recipe next time, but the other one, a beer I have brewed many times, did not turn out right. It was watery and thin and had an odd flavor.

I'd say it will probably be a toss up. The good thing is you don't have a predisposition on what the flavor should be which is in your favor because if it tastes good, no worries. If you brew a recipe several times you know right away when something is off. It's a thing of memory.

I just uploaded my India Brown Ale recipe, I missed my OG by 20 points, but it came out fantastic, it wouldn't have been nearly as good if it came out as planned.

I just brewed the same and only hit 1.070. It seems like I can never get the OG to be exact to what the instructions say. some times a few points under, a couple times a few points over. It always ends up good in the end though

I think it'll absolutely be drinkable and I wouldn't worry about the hops at all. I've been doing partial mashes for a long time now and that's standard for every one of my brews. I don't siphon. I chill until I get down well below 80 degrees and then I literally take my boil kettle and pour everything though a strainer, through a large funnel and into the carboy to get all of my hops out. You want to oxygenate prior to pitching your yeast anyway so I don't care about areation during dumping into the carboy... as a matter of fact, I hit it with an oxygen stone and O2 tank once it's all in the carboy.

My GUESS on missing the OG was simply the efficiencly of your mashing process (mostly) which I wouldn't lose a lot of sleep over... it'll get better... and then the boil. When you're boiling, you're boiling off water and your wort is getting more and more concentrated (higher and higher OG) so the fact that you stalled boiling for what sounds like a while when you did your late addition, I'm guessing you didn't get that "concentrating" effect.

I think the beer will be great though... it just won't have as much alcohol in it.

How much wort did you have after boiling? I would think that with 8 lbs extract it would be really hard for the gravity to really be low - it looks like you should be able to get 1.054 from that much extract without any grains at all in 5 gallons.

Are you sure you had a really good hydrometer sample?

my first AG our OG was supposed to be 1.058 and we were aroun 1.04ish but the beer tasted fine, much better than expected on our first AG.

gabeweisz said:

How much wort did you have after boiling? I would think that with 8 lbs extract it would be really hard for the gravity to really be low - it looks like you should be able to get 1.054 from that much extract without any grains at all in 5 gallons.

Are you sure you had a really good hydrometer sample?

Click to expand...

THat's a much better way of getting at what I was trying to get at....

I was thinking you might have had over 5 gallons and didn't boil down to 5 to "concentrate" the sugars up to your target OG... or maybe you were at 5 and didn't have enough sugars somehow (through the mashing process) to hit and boiling more off would have gotten you there, albeit with a small end gallons.

... When I do my partial mashes, I always end up with 3.5 - 4 gallons of concentrated wort, get it into my carboy and then simply add filtered water to top off until I hit my OG.

I brewed a Robust porter last year and missed the OG by 10 points. It took first in the SoCal homebrew championship this year. :rockin:

So chances are, it'll be just fine!

gabeweisz said:

How much wort did you have after boiling? I would think that with 8 lbs extract it would be really hard for the gravity to really be low - it looks like you should be able to get 1.054 from that much extract without any grains at all in 5 gallons.

Are you sure you had a really good hydrometer sample?

Click to expand...

So the AHS instructions call for 2.5 gallons of strike water, and 2 quarts to rinse the grains, which I did both. After all that and the 60 minute boil (which I think was a weak boil the entire time, not to mention the extract killing the last 15 mins as mentioned) I think I ended up with approx 2 gallons in the fermenting bucket, and had to add 3 gallons tap water.

Hydro sample was accurate, took another one this morning at room temp.

Thanks for the responses

yeah... then I'm thinking is was a simply matter of mash efficiency...

Instead of simply adding 3 gallons of tap water next time, just add one and half and take a reading... and then keep adding small amounts of water until you bring it down to your desired OG.

At least that's what I do.

Either way missing your OG like you did isn't going to make it taste bad at all. It just won't have as heavy a alcohol "hottness" to it.

One of the most common issues we run into when working with partial boils is the hydrometer reading coming up too low. Once the cooled wort is added to the fermenter and the additional water is added, the heavier sugars are still settled at the bottom. When this happens you get a low reading when taken from the top or a high reading when taken from the bottom with a thief. To make sure that all of the sugars are well mixed, make sure you vigorously stir the wort for a couple of minutes. This also helps aerate the wort.

Something else I have noticed with mini-mash recipe kits is that many homebrewers who do not work with all-grain do not know that they need to adjust the pH of the water. If the pH is not adjusted as close as possible to 5.2, then the efficiency will be low. One quick way to help adjust the pH of the mash water for a mini-mash recipe is to add about 1 ½ cups of malt extract to the water when it is heating up. If you have really high pH water, you might want to consider using spring water. Having a good pH level will help you get a better conversion rate.

When performing a late addition, we recommend adding the malt extract at flame out. This way you are not disrupting the hop schedule. Just add the malt extract and let it sit in the pot for 10 minutes before continuing to cool the wort down.

Looking at the recipe in question, the malt extract alone should give you a hydrometer reading of 1.057. The base grain in the recipe should yield about 12 points (at 70% efficiency) with about 4 more points from the specialty grains.

Lockwyn M.
Austin Homebrew Supply

You need to know when you have a false reading. A false reading is the last thing people think of and you can change your brewing technique in a bad way when it is not needed.

Liquid malt extract has a factor of 36 points per pound per gallon. So if you have 8 pounds of extract, the math would be 36x8 divided by 5 (gallons). This equals 57.6 or 1.0576. This is what you have if you dissolve 8 pounds of extract into 5 gallons of water. If you have a reading less than this you have more than 5 gallons or you have a false reading because you didn't mix well. This doesn't even account for the grain which will add more points.

The 999BW I hit 1.150.. Yeah, I missed the target OG a little. But she finished at 1.04 :rockin: