My first AG brew. Few mishaps

So I bewed my first ag batch today. I Milk Chocolate Stout Porter I milled my grain and got the strike water up to 168 in my boilermaster kettle with a false bottom.

Filled up the fasle bottom and added 1.25 quarts of water per lb of grain. Added grain and it held at 152. I had to heat up the tun and vourlauf a few times to keep it at 152. Stirred prob every 15 min.

I made my own fly sparge out of copper coil and sparged for about 35 min @ 170 degrees.

I took my Pre boil gravity @ 1.060 for 6 gal of Wort.

Boiled and added hops and chilled and pitched my wort.

During that process i ended up breaking my hydrometer and spilled my wort to take a OG. Ended up with 5 gallons so I think my OG was actually 1.060.

Target OG should have been 1.050. Its fermenting right now and seems to be taking of nicely. Will that 1.060 vs 1.050 differance make a huge differance?

It will affect your hop utilization and your BU/GU ratio...it wont be the same beer, but it will still be good.

Yes these things happen! A couple more trys and you will be able to do it easily and efficiently with no breakage I suspect. And yes IMHO 10 points is a rather large difference. It may well taste really good as a bigger beer. Whatever the case I bet you'll drink it...!

we've all had lower og happen, but the beer still tastes good. it'll just end up around 5% instead of 6

So what could I have done to have a more accurate OG? I'm sure there are quite a few variables.

Temp seemed pretty close. It dropped a few times to 150 but I kept it pretty accurate I thought.

Sparge time could have been longer? I slowed it down so it took 35 min. Will slowing it down even longer help? Maybe 45 min?

Using Seattle Tap water. Does that sometimes effect the OG?

Trying to evaluate my brew and see what changes I could have made to get a more accurate OG.

If your going to fly sparge, I would increase your time to at least 60 min. You can batch sparge in less time than that but that is a process that you'll have to decide on.

Collect all your runnings, stir in your BK and then collect a sample and cool to 60 degrees for your gravity reading. If you know your boil off rate, you can easily calculate your post boil gravity.

Preboil OG x vol = Postboil OG x vol

Remember to relax and slow down, your making beer! This is fun.

Good luck,
Bull

Thanks for the advice! I \'ll slow that sparge down next time. I know my wife said your hobby sure seems to be stressing you out! I'm guess I want it to be perfect. But it sure was fun! Even if my brewing buddies played guitar hero the whole time!

did you add cocoa powder? most brew programs dont take into account that even though it's not fermentable, it's another dissolved solid, and it'll up your SG

It did require a 1lb of lactose but the recipie came from northerbrewer so I would assume they counted for that addition in their recommended OG?