Way overshot my OG!

So a couple of weeks back I brewed the Honey Wheat recipe in my sig and somehow, I don't know how, I ended up with an OG of 1.068. That's quite a bit above what it should have been. I figured this would ferment down to about 1.020 or so, having been bigger than I expected. Last night I racked it into secondary and took an SG reading: 1.012!! That's around 7.4% ABV!! This certainly is much more than I expected or would even want. It turned out nicely crisp and easy to drink which might be a problem being so high in alchy. I was hoping for this to be my lawnmower beer but at this rate, I'll end up underneath the lawnmower! Anyway, any ideas as to why the OG was so off?

omniscientomar said:

I was hoping for this to be my lawnmower beer but at this rate, I'll end up underneath the lawnmower! Anyway, any ideas as to why the OG was so off?

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Haha, roflmao. Some lawnmower beer lol. I would suspect the honey may have been a bit more fermentable than the average. I have read this is one of the tricks with it, especially for those who use it to prime as it may produce unexpected results.

yeah.. the honey realy ferments down. My latest belgians both had a pound of belgian candi in there. They fermented damn near a full .010th lower than other batches without the candi!

just a fair warning, this beer will need to age. The honey will have some sharp alcohol flavors that need to mellow with time.

I was mostly surprised because I almost always hit the OG that ProMash indicates to within a couple of points. According to Promash the attenuation is somewhere near 82%. I used the WLP001 yeast cake from my ESB.

BTW, I do plan on conditioning this for a while. I did enjoy the sample I had last night but there was just a hint of sharpness to it that I would like to mellow out. I'll probably keg this one in a week or two and let it sit in the fridge for a month or so.