Extremely high OG reqding

Brewed my first batch of beer last night and when I finished up I took my OG. (pre-pitch) and unless I'm totally reading the hydrometer wrong I came up with 1.117 when the recipe range was supposed to be 1.043-1.046. The water temp was a bit warm 78 degrees when I took the reading. Do you suppose I read the hydrometer wrong or did I just brew some high octane Irish Red?

What is your post boil volume? What is the batch size for the recipe. What was your recipe? Was this a partial boil or full boil?

12oz of grains, 7lbs LME I'm guessing full boil. Not sure the difference between partial and full boils. Be easier to just go step by step.

Steeped the grains in 3 gallons of water for 30 minutes at 150-160 degrees (recipe said steep 10-30 minutes, I like a deep robust beer so I did 30) took kettle off heat and added the LME then boiled for an hour. After the boil I had about 2.5-2.75 gallons left in the kettle. Added 2 gallons of top off water and cooled the wort. Took my OG reading.

Edit: I had 1oz of cascade hops boiling for that hour then added 1oz of flavoring hops for the last 3 minutes of the boil.

You're doing it wrong. Your hydrometer either stuck to the side of your sample tube or you measured the gravity of the dme.

There wasn't any DME and no way the hydrometer stuck to the side of anything.

Meatyboy said:

12oz of grains, 7lbs LME I'm guessing full boil. Not sure the difference between partial and full boils. Be easier to just go step by step.

Steeped the grains in 3 gallons of water for 30 minutes at 150-160 degrees (recipe said steep 10-30 minutes, I like a deep robust beer so I did 30) took kettle off heat and added the LME then boiled for an hour. After the boil I had about 2.5-2.75 gallons left in the kettle. Added 2 gallons of top off water and cooled the wort. Took my OG reading.

Edit: I had 1oz of cascade hops boiling for that hour then added 1oz of flavoring hops for the last 3 minutes of the boil.

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If you only boil a portion of the full batch, it's a partial boil...if you boil the entire batch volume, it's a full boil. You did a partial boil.

So your post boil volume looks like it was 4.5-4.75 gallons. 7 lbs of LME equals about 252 points (36X7) divided by your volume is about 54 or 1.054. So you would expect your post boil gravity to be about 1.054

Take a vaery close look at your hydrometer and it's scale and make sure you are reading it correctly.

Your volume into the fermentor would have to have been 2.15 gallons to have an OG of 1.117

That's a good possibility. I'm on the road for the next week or two. I'll have to double check my hydrometer to see if I wasn't just reading the wrong number. Was getting pretty sleepy by the time I finished my batch.

Another thing I forgot to check was to see if the thing was calibrated to start with.

Meatyboy said:

That's a good possibility. I'm on the road for the next week or two. I'll have to double check my hydrometer to see if I wasn't just reading the wrong number. Was getting pretty sleepy by the time I finished my batch.

Another thing I forgot to check was to see if the thing was calibrated to start with.

Click to expand...

Well they are pretty darn accurate unless you bang it hard enough to break it. Even if they are off it's usually in the third decimal point area. There is a temperature correction chart that should have come with the hydrometer but your apparent reading is considerably more than a temp correction would indicate.

So, after 9 days on the road and a back injury (severe back spasm, a really really bad pulled muscle in my lower back) from leaping from the back of a big rig trailer... Yeah, I'm not as young as I used to be, gotta remember that. I finally made it home.

After looking at my Hydrometer I realized that my OG was actually 1.048 which is exactly where it was supposed to be. I tested my batch just a few minutes ago and saw it was at 1.024 which is also where it's exactly supposed to be. I just racked to secondary to help clear up more of the loose grain floating around. The sample I tasted was quite a bit like a flat Killians with some alcohol flavor (I know, it's very very green). I have a feeling it's gonna turn out really good. I plan on bottling in about 3 weeks, which is around the time the doc said I should be able to stand for any extended period of time if I'm lucky.

Thanks for everyone's replies and help.