What did I do wrong???

Just did my second partial-mash ever. A Winter Solstice Ale from one of the clone books. Followed everything exactly and the OG is supposed to be 1078 and when I took a reading right before the pitch, is was 1040.

What does this mean? Is this still going to turn out ok? Is there anything I can do to correct this or should I let it be? I just got done brewing 10 minutes ago and I'm nervous that I f'ed this up. Advice or suggestions what might have caused this? Thanks!

John

Cant do too much anymore, your efficiency was probably low. Pitch yeast and see how it taste not much you can do now.

Sorry that's over my head. Very new here. Efficiency was low? Meaning what?

How many lbs of grain was your PM? You'd have to have a large PM with near zero efficiency to be off by that much I think....is it possible you either topped off with too much water or didn't mix it sufficiently?

Low efficiency would mean you did not get good conversion on your mash. If you outline your exact mash procedure (and recipe) we'd be able to help more.

Low efficiency means you may not have extracted all the sugars from the grain to bring the gravity up.

Also, you may not have gotten your top off water mixed well. It's hard to get it mixed up so when you took your sample it was from the watered down part. So combine your less than efficient mash and not mixing well enough equals low OG.

You will still end up with a tasty beverage either way.

Also, you may not have gotten your top off water mixed well.

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I'm voting on that one - what was your recipe. MOST of your sugars should have come from the extract so I can't see it being THAT far off.

Was it a partial boil where you had to mix the wort with water afterword?

What's the recipe?

Side note - I really messed up on a Porter and was completely bumbed out. Once it was finished and bottled I knew every flaw and all my friends said "It tastes GREAT".

I agree, extract and partial mash brewers should see 95% - 100% efficiency every time because they aren't extracting anything from the grain, it is all in the extract.

When adding your top up water, don't add it all right away. Add maybe 75%, stir, stir, and stir, take a reading and if your OG is High, add more water until you get the OG. Your goal is to hit the OG of the recipe, not to make 5 gallons. You may end up with more or less than the target volume but it will taste like the recipe meant for it to taste.

Linc

ifishsum said:

How many lbs of grain was your PM? You'd have to have a large PM with near zero efficiency to be off by that much I think....is it possible you either topped off with too much water or didn't mix it sufficiently?

Low efficiency would mean you did not get good conversion on your mash. If you outline your exact mash procedure (and recipe) we'd be able to help more.

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6 lbs. of grain. Does this mean it will be a really low alcohol content? For what it's worth, it started fermenting wildly within 7 hours of pitching. This is a good sign at least, correct?

Is there anything that should be done at this point to improve it?

The recipe was Winter Solstice Ale from The Clone Brew book, can't remember the author.

Did you top off with water after brewing?

You might get better advice if you post the recipe and what you did to brew it.

Linc

I agree, extract and partial mash brewers should see 95% - 100% efficiency every time because they aren't extracting anything from the grain, it is all in the extract.

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That bolded section is not correct- if you are partial mashing (i.e using grain with diastatic power) as opposed to simply steeping speciality grains, you are indeed extracting sugar from the grain.

flyangler18 said:

That bolded section is not correct- if you are partial mashing (i.e using grain with diastatic power) as opposed to simply steeping speciality grains, you are indeed extracting sugar from the grain.

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+1 hence the name, 'partial MASH'

Even at zero percent U from the mash you will get 100% from the extract...If we new how much extract to grain was used we could figure out what you should have gotten. If you mashed 6lbs of grain that would give you around 1.030 @ 75% so I'm guessing you used around 6lbs DME (1.048)to get you 1.078. If you only got 1.040 you probably got close to zero from the grain which seems unlikely really you should have gotten something from 6lbs of mashed grain.

TeleTwanger said:

+1 hence the name, 'partial MASH'

Even at zero percent U from the mash you will get 100% from the extract...If we new how much extract to grain was used we could figure out what you should have gotten. If you mashed 6lbs of grain that would give you around 1.030 @ 75% so I'm guessing you used around 6lbs DME (1.048)to get you 1.078. If you only got 1.040 you probably got close to zero from the grain which seems unlikely really you should have gotten something from 6lbs of mashed grain.

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So is this even going to turn out to have a reasonable alcohol content or is it completely screwed up?

Would not sparging in enough water cause this? I just sparged keeping all the grains in the bag, and using the seperate pot at 170 degrees for 10 minutes.

mangine77 said:

So is this even going to turn out to have a reasonable alcohol content or is it completely screwed up?

Would not sparging in enough water cause this? I just sparged keeping all the grains in the bag, and using the seperate pot at 170 degrees for 10 minutes.

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I'll just assume you got a wrong reading...How much exract did you put in? That will tell you the least SG.

So I just talked to my buddy that is a pretty hardcore brewer and he said that he thinks he knows the reason. We retraced the brew and I didn't stir the bucket after I topped off.

He said this could totally give a low reading because the hydrometer was probably sitting in mostly water. Makes sense right?? Maybe it will turn out ok after all.

It was 4lbs. of extract and 1lb. of candi sugar. Could this have caused the low reading??

yup there ya go.