Help me figure out what when wrong?

So I brewed an AHS Double Chocolate Stout partial mash tonight. I hit all the temps and times in the instructions. The target OG was supposed to be 1.056 at 5.25 gallons. Mine came in at 1.080 at a little over 5.25 gallons.

Here is the bill...

12 oz Chocalate malt
4 oz Crystal 40L malt
2 oz Black Roasted Barley
2.5 lbs Maris Otter malt
2 oz Black Patent malt

I steeped the grains at 155 degrees for 45 minutes. A couples times it dropped to 150, a couple times it hit 162.

I poured 2qts of 170 degree sparge water over the grain in a colander.

I then brought the wort to 190 degrees and added 4lbs of dark DME and 8 oz of Malto Dextrin.

I brought that to a boil and added 1 oz of Gelena bittering hops @ 60 mins, I kept the boil @ 213 degrees for 55 mins and added 1 oz of Belgian Cocoa Powder for the last 5 mins.

I put the kettle in an ice bath and it took me about 20 - 30 mins to drop it to 80 degrees. I aerated the wort in a 6.5 gallon carboy and topped it off to a little over 5.25 gallons. Took the OG and it hit 1.080.

The only thing I did different than previous brews is I sanitized the carboy with .50 Oz of starzan to 1 gallon of water. Shook it up, added, and dumped 1 more gallon of water in it. Also, when I steeped the grains I lifted the bag out a couple dozen times. Also, the grain didn't fit all to well into my colander, and my sparge water didn't cover the grain as well as I would have liked.

Any ideas why I missed the target OG so much?

The main thing I'm concerned about is I did this brew on a spur of the moment after work so I didn't make a yeast starter. I figured since it was to come in at under 1.060 my Wyeast 1098 would still be ok without it. So I under pitched according to my numbers.

I've not run the numbers, but a quick review would say you should be somewhere in the region of 1.055-1.060. To get 1.080, you would need an extra 100+ points (about 2.5 lbs of DME or 4 lbs of grain).

No way you had that without adding extra fermentables. Your measurement was off. Did you take the sample from the bottom of the fermenter (heavier sinks). Usually measurements are low because the sugars drop and people take samples from the top.

I dropped a wine thief into the carboy to get the sample, the type that pulls from the bottom, so it looks as though that might be the cause. Originally I topped off to 5 gallons evenly and it came in at 1.090, I added the .25 - .50 gallons more of water to get it to the 1.080.

Thanks for calming my nerves.

If you want to get a sample from higher up you can still use your current equipment. Just hold your wine thief 1/2 way down in the carboy. Then use your mouth to slowly suck a sample into the wine thief like a straw. When the suction stops it will self seal and your ready to drop the hydrometer in.

BLACKHAWK007 said:

If you want to get a sample from higher up you can still use your current equipment. Just hold your wine thief 1/2 way down in the carboy. Then use your mouth to slowly suck a sample into the wine thief like a straw. When the suction stops it will self seal and your ready to drop the hydrometer in.

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Thanks I'll give that a try. I never knew it would make such a difference pulling the sample from the bottom.

If you don't thoroughly mix it, a sample from anywhere is useless. If the recipe is mostly extract, trust the recipe/calculator rather than any measurement.

Calder said:

If you don't thoroughly mix it, a sample from anywhere is useless. If the recipe is mostly extract, trust the recipe/calculator rather than any measurement.

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I'm not sure lack of mixing was the problem. I shook the full carboy for quite a few minutes, one to aerate and two to mix everything well.