Original Gravity low.. Help

Ok according to beer tools and such, my original gravity for my Belgian dubbel is suppose to be 1.065. I just took the measurement at 80 and it is 1.040.. I mashed it at 158. Why is it way off?

This beer has d90 dark candi syrup it as well.

What should I do?

Will it be fine after the temp gets down to room temp?

Stir it well, and check it again to make sure your reading is correct.

There are several reasons for poor efficiency- most often it seems to be related to a poor crush. Did you have a good crush? How many pounds of grain did you use, and what is post-boil volume?

I had a good crush .. Post boil volume was a hair over 5 gallons. I had a total grain bill of 12lbs and then a lb of that d90.. Everything seemed to have been spot on all the way through until I got it cooled down. The d90 was 1.030 by itself so I have no clue what went wrong. Will it still turn out alright or is it just colored water at this point?

Can I add another pound of clear candied sugar to it in the fermenter to get the alcohol up?

Bed efficiency/bad crush. Take a preboill gravity reading next time to see where you are at. Have some DME on hand if you are gonna need to make up some lost gravity.
I would recommend a refractometer ($25-30 on eBay) its easier to take a reading when ever you want. You will also gain more gravity points by boiling longer.
You still need to figure out the root cause though as to why the efficiency was bad.

Bigapinnc said:

Can I add another pound of clear candied sugar to it in the fermenter to get the alcohol up?

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I would leave it. It will finish dry and may not have much body. I have done that before with a Heff. It wasn't worth it. I brought the ABV up, but it didnt taste very good.
A 1.040 beer will be nice in the summer.

So do you think the flavors will suffer ?

And how do I get my OG up for next time?

Bigapinnc said:

So do you think the flavors will suffer ?

And how do I get my OG up for next time?

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I think the flavor will suffer.
If you had a good crush, take a look at the mash tun. If you batch sparged, how long did you sparge for? You may not have rinsed the grains as well as you thought. When I sparge it takes at least 1/2 hour to collect my sparge water. Maybe you are going too fast, or not stirring the crap out of it.

Ok well it must be that I am not stirring the crap out of it. That's unfortunate. I guess I'll have to remake

Not implying to constantly be stirring, but when you dough in, stir it up real well, after about a half hour of mashing I will stir it real good again check my temp and close it up. When I'm ready to sparge I add my sparge water and stir it up for a few real well and let it sit at least 10-15 minutes and open the ball valve a 1/4 to half way and slowly drain. Hope it helps! People helped me with the same issue I had as you from this forum.

Well dang that is about the same thing I have done. I think my biggest issue is that my stirring spoon or paddle is not long enough. It doesn't reach all the way. Leaves a few inches packed down in the Mash tun. It could be where I am losing

I just posted a similar issue. I came in .017 low. (Pre boil)
Then I added 1.5cups of dme and was .004 over that beercalc said I should be at..... I def didn't stir like im supposed too...

Man that is crazy. Well I just hope the beer is still drinkable.