Starting Gravity a bit high?

Hi everyone,

I brewed my first batch using my very own made up recipe (8th batch overall). I think I may have gotten something wrong because my starting gravity diluted to 5 gallons was around 1.060. Here's the recipe:

1.90# pilsner malt
1.90# white wheat malt
0.75# flaked oats
1.00# light pils DME
3.00# bavarian wheat DME (65% wheat), late addition (15 minutes left in boil)

0.50oz Saaz (3% AA; 60 min)
0.50oz Saaz (3% AA; 15 min)

I mashed the pilsner, white wheat, and flaked oats somewhere around 150-160 for an hour in about 1.7 gallons of water. Then sparged with 170 degree water to get up to 3 gallons.

It boiled down to about 2 2/3 gallons. I then filled up to 5 gallons, gave it a good stir and took the O.G. reading....1.060. My calcs showed that it should have been around 1.051. So I filled it up to almost 6 gallons to get it down to 1.051.

When I calculated things I figured on a 50% efficiency for the mash. Maybe this was too low? I was mashing on the stovetop in my brew kettle (though I do the boil outside on the cajun cooker) and didn't think I would get over 50%. If I run the numbers to get a 1.060 O.G. then the efficiency would have had to have been more like 75% which seems unlikely.

Any thoughts as too why my O.G. would have been higher than expected?

Why do you think mashing on your stove would give you less than 75% eff. Doesnt' seem that far out of the spectrum. 50% efficiency is really low. I would expect more than that.....

Without even messing around with mash/sparge temps, plugging the malt numbers into Beersmith gives me an est. OG of 1.060. I wouldn't give yourself a mash efficiency less than 75% doing a partial mash with only 3-4# of grains. Looks like you done good. Pretty high off scale for accuracy, but maybe just enjoy it as a success. Cheers!

i get 80% efficiency doing BIAB regularly. 75% is more common, but 80% isn't at all unlikely.

I guess I expected less since it was my first partial mash.

Next time I'll plan on 75%.

This time I'll enjoy the extra gallon of beer!

Thanks for the feedback

Looking at this recipe:

1.90# pilsner malt
1.90# white wheat malt
0.75# flaked oats
1.00# light pils DME
3.00# bavarian wheat DME (65% wheat), late addition (15 minutes left in boil)

0.50oz Saaz (3% AA; 60 min)
0.50oz Saaz (3% AA; 15 min)

Would ya'll call this a witbier or a hefeweizen? I thought I was making a witbier but now I realize I didn't use "unmalted" wheat. Does that make this more of a hefeweizen? I fermented with White Labs Belgian Wit yeast then racked half on it's own and half over raspberry puree.

SwillyBilly said:

Looking at this recipe:

1.90# pilsner malt
1.90# white wheat malt
0.75# flaked oats
1.00# light pils DME
3.00# bavarian wheat DME (65% wheat), late addition (15 minutes left in boil)

0.50oz Saaz (3% AA; 60 min)
0.50oz Saaz (3% AA; 15 min)

Would ya'll call this a witbier or a hefeweizen? I thought I was making a witbier but now I realize I didn't use "unmalted" wheat. Does that make this more of a hefeweizen? I fermented with White Labs Belgian Wit yeast then racked half on it's own and half over raspberry puree.

Click to expand...

The grain %'s look close to my Hefe recipe, except that you are using a Wit yeast strain. I'd probably say it's a Wit if you taste the finished product and it tastes like a Wit. Otherwise, you could call it a Belgian inspired American Wheat.

I would mark that as an A+ ! and left the extra gallon out. Congrats on the ..Hefawit? Cheers

Thanks! I'm looking forward to tasting it in a couple of weeks. I could call it a HefeWit or maybe a Half-wit Hefe.