Missed preboil OG according to BeerSmith

Right now I have been starting the boil on my 3rd all grain batch ever and I have run into a problem. According to BeerSmith I should have started with 7.63 gallons of water and after 2 rounds of batch sparging I should be topping the total off to 5.72 gallons. Problem is that I ended up with close to 7 gallons of wort with a preboil OG of 1.038 instead of 1.052. This is the third batch i have made with my converted cooler mash tun.

These are possible mistakes I can think of:

1. I tried watching the NCAA BB games as I have been brewing today and thus miss-measured the initial volume of my strike water.

2. I crushed the grain too fine with my Barley crusher.

3. I tilted/tipped my mash tun too long when drianing of the batch sparge runnings.

4. I miss-measured the weight of one of the grains. I am thinking I might have put in 7.75 lbs of Pale Malt 2 row and not 8.75 lbs.

4. I was NOT drinking a homebrew when I made initial measurements and this angered the homebrewing gods.


So to fix this should I try raising the OG but adding some DME or do I extend the boil from 60 minutes to 90 minutes in order to drive off more water? (When there is evaporation during the boiling process is water the only thing released or will some of the extract boil off also?)


This is the recipe:

8.75 Pale Malt 2 row
1.00 lb Caramel/Crystal malt 20L
1.00 lb Munich Malt
0.50 lbs of Caramunich malt
0.25 lbs Caramel Wheat malt
0.25 lbs Chocolate Rye
0.25 lb Carapils

mash at 154 F for 60 minutes and the batch sparge with round 1 at 3.46 gal at 168 F and round 2 at 1.73 gal at 168 F. I had 15 minute rests for both batch sparge rounds.

So should I even try to adjust the OG or just let this go? I am thinking that missing 1 lb of the Pale 2 row is strongly possible.

I'd either adjust the OG or adjust your hops, because thats a pretty big swing. do you usually get >80% efficiency cuz I think that's around what your predicted OG was for? missing 1lb of grain wouldn't account for that big of a loss either. I'm leaning towards #4

No, usually I get in the mid 70% for efficiency. I think I need to learn how to set this number up in Beer Smith. This is only the third time I have used this program to brew all grain.

this isn't some sober mistake where you forgot to temperature adjust is it?

I am not sure what you mean by "temperature adjust"? I used BeerSmith to give me the temp of the strike water prior to adding the grain. It read out to 13.44 qt at 166 F. I heated the water to about 175 F and then added it to my empty mash tun and waited until the temp was at 166 F before adding the grain and mixing it all.

Thanks for answering my response.

Mick

sorry I should have been more clear. I mean did you forget to temperature adjust your gravity reading

msa8967 said:

I am not sure what you mean by "temperature adjust"? I used BeerSmith to give me the temp of the strike water prior to adding the grain. It read out to 13.44 qt at 166 F. I heated the water to about 175 F and then added it to my empty mash tun and waited until the temp was at 166 F before adding the grain and mixing it all.

Thanks for answering my response.

Mick

Click to expand...

Adjusting for temperature of the wort on the hydrometer. 1.38 @ 145 = 1.055 @ 68

I'm going with second number 4

I did not adjust the OG for temperature. I had let the wort sample in the hydromter cool down to near room temp when I measured the 1.038. I just checked the same hydrometer with this initial wort and it is now at 1.042 so things might be better than I thought. I need to read about how to do the temperature adjustment in using hydrometers. This could easily be a source of error.

Thanks for your input.

OG = Current OG + (1.313454-0.132674 x T + 0.002057793 x T ^2-0.000002627634 x T^3) / (1000)
, where T is the temperature the reading was done at (in F)

there's probably charts somewhere to do it without the math, I just use that formula in a spreadsheet

So what temperature was the wort when you made that reading?

In BeerSmith, on the left under TOOLS is an option called Hydrometer Adjust. Click on it. Measure the temp of your sample, then the gravity, and plug those two numbers in.

I didn't think to measure the wort temp when I pulled the sample for the OG. Good to know for future reference that there are formulas and options to make these adjustments without letting the wort cool down to room temp. I will try this out tomorrow on my next brew.

I do think it is time to open a cold one and hit mute of March Maddness telecast.

thanks for the infomation everyone.

I ended up using 5 gallons of the wort in the kettle in order to leave enough of the hop trub in the kettle. Last measured OG was 1.06 at room temp of 66 F which means things probably worked out Ok in the end.

Thanks everyone for your advice.

I always just cool the sample to the calibration temp, 60F on my hydrometer. Fridge or freezer. No math required, less chance of error.

Wouldn't each running be a different density?
I always stir the pot for awhile before collecting a sample to measure the OG