Very high original gravity...again.

Hey folks. I'm Mike. I've been lurking around for a while and I decided to finally make an account.

It seems my problem is a common one around here. Yesterday my brother and I brewed our third batch of homebrew. This time we decided to go a little crazy (for us) so we made an Imperial Stout with a couple additions. We added an ounce of coffee to the steeping grains, and an ounce of unsweetened baking chocolate to the boil. We have no idea if that was too much or too little for 5 gallons of beer but I guess experimentation is what homebrewing is all about. Anyway our original gravity came out to be 1.101. I know that imperial stouts can have high readings but I thought that seemed a little high.

I've seen people on this forum figure out what the OG should be based on the recipe and I was wondering if someone could do it for me or give me a link where I could figure it out myself.

Here's the recipe we used...


11# coopers light malt extract


1/2# 60L crystal malt
1/2# roasted barley
1/2# chocolate malt
1/2# 20L crystal malt
1/4# black malt

2 oz galena (11.6%) 60 min.
2 oz fuggles 2 min

1 oz Sumatra blend coffee

1 oz unweetened baking chocolate

The instructions called for the grains to be steeped as 1.5 gallons of water was heated from room tempurature to 170. After we did that was when we had our inspiration so we changed out the grains for an ounce of coffee and steeped that for about 10 minutes at 170.

The chocolate went in with the malt extract.

If our OG is not accurate I think our mistake may have been to check it at a slightly higher tempurature than normal. We forgot to take the tempurature before measuring


Anyway, Thanks. I look forward to absorbing all of your helpful knowledge on this forum in the future

That Coopers extract is liquid right? Plugging your recipe in to Beer Tools Pro, it says your og should be around 1.090. I don't think the temperature would have given you that much of a difference when taking your reading. It could also be that the wort was not fully mixed up when you took the reading. Or simply you got more sugars than what BTP thinks you should have gotten... Either way, I guess 10 points isn't that far off...

Oh great! Thanks for the info.

Yep the extract was liquid. I'm a little concerned about wort explosions and bottle bombs. I've never brewed anything this heavy. What FG should I shoot for before I bottle?

EDIT: Maybe I got some extra sugar from the coffee. It was slightly flavored after all.

You basically want to bottle when the hydrometer reading doesn't change from one day to the next. To be on the safe side I'd wait a week or two. That's a pretty big beer so you'll need time for it to mellow out anyway so don't rush it. When I brew something anywhere close to that big, I usually leave it in primary for at least 2-3 weeks and even sometimes just over a month. That'll also clear up the beer quite nicely, not that it's that important in a stout...

In Beer Smith, I get a estimated OG of 1.098 and estimated FG of 1.025.

Thanks guys!

Nurmey, that would put my ABV somewhere near 9.5% no?

I'm getting excited

If all goes as expected your ABV should be 9.59%.

Make sure to take a couple aspirins and drink lots of water after a night of drinking these babies.

Sounds really really really good to me.



I would give a beer this big at least a month in the primary, take a gravity sample, and wait three days to take a second gravity sample, bottling only if the two match.

Cheers

Ah another stone drinker. They're a huge inspiration for me. Taking a tour of their brewery/bistro is what made me want to brew my own beer.



Thanks for the tip

Saccharomyces said:

...I would give a beer this big at least a month in the primary...

Click to expand...

+1 on this...

If you plan on making many beers from your own recipe then getting some brewing software is really helpful. I use Beersmith. BeerTools and ProMash are a couple of others.

If you just want to plug your recipe into a tool to get expect OG, color and bitterness occasionally there are a couple of online calculators that are pretty good. The BeerTools website is what I use when I'm playing with recipes away from my home computer. If you do some searches you can find a few others.

With an extract beer the OG is very predictable. If your measurements don't match expected it is usually due to measurement errors. Either you don't have the correct volume of wort, the correct weight of extract or your hydrometer is off. The other common problem is not completely mixing the top-up water before measuring.

Craig

oh, and if you decide to go with Beer Tools Pro, there's a 10% off code in BYO mag. It's usually something like BYOM8 or BYOD8 something like that... I think it depends on the issue.