First AG - Trying to make sense of the numbers

First off thanks for all the great info in this forum! I'm trying to figure out my mash efficiency and why my OG was so off

The numbers:

I'm going for a Sierra clone for a session Holiday party
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Yield: 5 gallons
10 lbs of 2 Row
.5 lbs of Crystal 10L
.5 lbs of CaraPils

First runnings 2 gallons - 1.016 at 100F
Seconds runnings 5.5 gallons - 1.027 at 100F

After the 60 minute boil I ended up with about 4.25 gallons - 1.010 at 75F ! WTF?

So I topped it off to 5 gallons of cold tap water (hope thats not bad). Do I have some crazy potent Pale Ale here? The targets are OG 1.053 - 1.061

I have no brewhouse efficiency yet but would like to use these numbers to start if possible. Thanks all!

your efficiency is about 10%....bad.a few things could have happened. Just to reiterate you have 4.25 gallons of wort at 1.010SG? correct? or was that your final gravity. If thats your starting gravity i have a few questions:
1) was the grain crushed.
2) what temps were your water additions
3)how long did you let it sit before you drained


at 70% you should have hit around 1.055

scinerd3000 said:

1) was the grain crushed.

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Not as silly as it sounds. My second batch ever was an extract+steeped grains "porter" but I didn't know you needed to crush them before steeping.

It wasn't a total disaster because it was still mostly extract, but it was definitely on the lighter side of a porter...

Crap! I took a gravity reading after the boil and after I cooled the the wort. It read 1.010 at 75F. Is that OG or SG? The grains were crushed. I added 65F grains to 165F strike water and let it sit for 60 minutes. Then I added 170F water and let it drain to up to 5.5 gallons. Does that shed light on anything? What kind of beer can I expect out of this?

szac said:

Crap! I took a gravity reading after the boil and after I cooled the the wort. It read 1.010 at 75F. Is that OG or SG? The grains were crushed. I added 65F grains to 165F strike water and let it sit for 60 minutes. Then I added 170F water and let it drain to up to 5.5 gallons. Does that shed light on anything? What kind of beer can I expect out of this?

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quite frankly im stumped. You took your starting gravity SG (before fermentation) and at 1.010 either your reading your hydrometer wrong, or its miscalibrated or you really have a starting gravity of 1.010 which wont lead to beer. Technically i guess its still beer but it will have almost no alcohol.

Place your hydrometer in water and at 60 degrees F it should read at 1.010. If that runs true and your really reading it correctly i have no idea how you wouldnt have gotten sugars to have a higher starting gravity. One thing i notice is your second runnings has a higher gravity than your first runnings. That usually atleadt for me is the other way around. If anything, your first runnings should be even higher than your anticipated starting gravity of 1.053 or so.

So if I'm reading it wrong (which seems likely now that my readings appear to be the reverse of what I should be seeing) then I will have beer! Whew! I noticed that it's already started bubbling like an hour after I sealed it up. I'll check the calibration. Thanks for helping me in my noobness.

You were right. I was looking at the wrong number (Balling?). I rolled the hydrometer around and my readings now look like this:

first runnings - 1.059 at 100F
second runnings - ?? I totally gaffed that
post boil - 1.039 at 75F for 4.5 gallons

So what about the extra 1 gallon of water I added right before pitching the yeast? I'm assuming that's gonna weaken the beer in more, but by how much?

promash puts that at 1.032 with dilution. a bit low but it will still be beer. What you can do is mix up some DME and water and boil it and add to the fermenter. Assuming you have 5.5 gallon batch and your SG is 1.032, adding 2.5 lbs of DME should bump you up to 1.052 (for what would have been the starting gravity). That would atleast give you more protential alcohol. Dont fret, the first time i saw a hydrometer i had no clue how to read the damn thing...

I suspect the 1.027 for the second runnings is correct.

A few things... did you stop at 5.5 gallons because that's all you can handle in the kettle? If you can, collect at least 6.5 for an all grain 5 gallon batch. Boil off of 1.5 gallons in 60 minutes is typical.

Second, crank that sparge water temp up to 180-185F, make sure you stir it in well, then drain.

Thanks for the tips guys. I shall put them to use for the next batch.

Is there a window for adding the DME to the primary to bump up the ABV? It's been in the primary about 20 hrs now and I won't be able to get any in there until tomorrow.

szac said:

Thanks for the tips guys. I shall put them to use for the next batch.

Is there a window for adding the DME to the primary to bump up the ABV? It's been in the primary about 20 hrs now and I won't be able to get any in there until tomorrow.

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id say your still fine. just make sure to boil it enough to sanitize and kill anything in there. Dump it in as soon as possible though, preferably when its stilll at high krausen (foaming)

SG= specific gravity, what you read on the hydrometer.

OG= Original Gravity, what the beer measures when transferred to the fermenter.

FG= Final Gravity, what the beer finally, after an interminably loooong time, ferments out to.

What was your mash temp? You want it to be about 152 for that 60 minutes, or longer. I need 175° water to get that 152° in my cooler. After sparging, I always chew some of the spent grains. If it's crunchy, you didn't mash well or your grind was too coarse. If it is nothing by hay, you did good. Or you could learn to do an iodine test in addition.

Well in an attempt to achieve all brewing foobars in one batch I've now had a boil over with the damn 2.5 lbs of DME gravity pump up! All wasn't lost so I have a quick question about how close I am to the 1.052 I was trying to hit with this.

I added 2.5 lbs DME to 1/2 gallon of water. Boiled it over and was left with 3L of wort. Is it still possible to calculate what my OG would be now? Are you able to calculate these in Pro Mash? I have Beer Alchemy but I don't think it does these kinds of things. Thanks again for all the help dudes.

szac said:

Well in an attempt to achieve all brewing foobars in one batch ...

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Reading this thread - you made me laugh out loud. Not to worry - it will be beer. Plenty of lessons for next time.

All right.. making progress now. I just racked to the secondary and final gravity is at 1.009. It also tasted good and had really light body and good color. Thanks again for all of the help.