Over shot my OG

Today I brewed a pale ale. My post boil gravity is reading 1.080. I was shooting for about 1.054-56. I rounded up the grain bill slightly but didn't. Expect this big of a jump. What can I do to lower the gravity? Can I add water and split to two fermenters?

You could add water.

Calculator

Before you do anything, post your actual numbers and process. It is pretty much impossible to overshoot your gravity by over 50%.

14.5 # 2 row

1.5 # crystal 60

I brewed in a bag starting with 8.5 gallons. Mashed in at 162 for an hour it held about 154. Post boil was about 6 gallons.

I really have no clue where I went wrong.

It doesn't sound like you did anything wrong except you were expecting about 55% efficiency and got about 82% instead (if your post boil volume measurement is correct). 55% is pretty low, what were you basing that on?

chickypad said:

It doesn't sound like you did anything wrong except you were expecting about 55% efficiency and got about 82% instead (if your post boil volume measurement is correct). 55% is pretty low, what were you basing that on?

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I really wasn't. I left my computer behind and went ahead with a recipe without getting the numbers crunched.

Where is a good baseline to set the efficiency in beersmith? Should I start around 70%?

You would want to set it at what you typically get on your system, and if your volumes and measurements are right you just got over 80%. If you've done other batches with the same method I would crunch the numbers and see if that's reproducible, then set your expected efficiency accordingly.

82% seems pretty high for BIAB. Are you sure about your OG?

Dynachrome said:

You could add water.

Calculator

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I just overshot a stout, boiled off too much. I guessed about how much water to top off with, and I just plugged in my numbers to this calculator. Turns out I guessed right. Thanks for the link, I'll probably use it again.

I don't find 82% to be that high. Based on the calculations that Hopville.com's recipe calculator produces for my brews, I get usually get between 80 and 86% for brews based mainly on British pale malt, mashing at 66-68C for 1.5-2 hrs, and 75% or a bit more if there is a good proportion of other stuff like oat flakes or roasted malts. I also use a grain bag, mashing in a boiler. My OG is always higher than the calculator estimates for the recipe. I haven't actually calulated the amount empirically myself though. 55% would be very low indeed. From your description I would expect 82% or thereabouts, sounds fine to me.

I just fed your grain bill (based on 7 1/2 lbs Great Western Premium 2-Row Malt and 1 1/2 lbs American Crystal 60L) into hopville.com's beer calculus and it estimates it would take 89% efficiency to get an OG of 1.080, which really does sound very high. Clearly it is calculating differently from the one you use!