First All Grain-O.G. skewed?

I brewed my first all grain batch the other day, and everything went pretty well except a few things. At the end of the mash I mashed out adding 3/4qt to raise the temp to 160, but it was a little low. So I cranked up the stove to raise it a couple degrees. Anyways, while getting my sparge water around, I forgot to turn off the heat and the temp got up to 172. I thought that the sparge temps would be too high with my sparge water at 190+ so I cooled with a couple ice cubes in water to 163. After all this, I batch sparged and my first half temps were low(due to a leaky seal in a cooler and the time messing around to cool mash) at about 161+/-, but the temp of the second rinsing was at the appropriate 170. I'm sure I didn't get the best efficiency, but I've done several partials with great success. My recipe had 6lbs. of grain: 3lbs white wheat, 1lb Bonlander, 1lb Pils, 1/2lb flaked adjuncts, 6oz Crystal 10, and 4oz Dextrine. I also added 2lbs of pitted cherries during the last 5 minutes of the boil(previously frozen). My O.G. was 1.038. Does that seem low? I'm not sure if all the sugars would be in solution from the cherries after 5 minutes, or some remains in the fruit(which would make the hydro read low). What are the opinions around here? Thanks for reading the lengthy post.

Only 6 pounds of griains? 1.038 sounds reasonable to me. My Belgian Wit has 5lbs malt and 5lbs of flaked wheat and always comes in around 1.038-1.040.

Don't worry about it. It sounds like it will be fine.

How much wort did you collect? did i miss it or did you not state it. Also, was the OG before or after the boil? and what where your volumes before and after boil.....

Why did you boil the cherrys? not worried about pectin? I would have put them in during secondary or maybe primary.

Does it sound low? Not if you were trying to make a 5 gallon batch it doesn't. I just plugged your numbers into The Beer Recipator and your expected gravity came out at 1.036 by sparging with 4 gallons and boiling 6.5 gallons down to 5. This indicates an 80% mash effciency!

If this was a half batch then yes, that is low.

If this was a full batch, then I suggest two things for future batches:

1.)Look at a number of recipes and get an idea of how much grain needs to go into an all grain 5 gallon batch. Get a feel for what is generally correct. Hint 10 -12 pounds is not uncommon.

2.)Use a free online calculator like The Beer Recipator to calculate what you need to put in to get some numbers behind your gut feeling.

Good luck and good brewing.

Oh, and one other thing. Always make sure your thermometer and hydrometer are properly calibrated.

I collected a little over 6G and boiled down to bit more than 5. The O.G. stated was after the boil and I didn't take one before. I wasn't concerned with the pectin, if you're talking about haze problems, as it is a belgian wit so I already expected haziness. Are there other problems it causes? I wasn't sure if there would be sugars in the fruit still, not in solution, that wouldn't read on a hydro. 1.038 seemed low for 6lbs grain and 2lbs fruit. I'll put a half pound cherries into secondary as well. What's the best way to pasteurize/sanitize fruit for the secondary? Oh, I haven't checked calibration of either instruments in a while, so I'll do that soon.

1.038 seemed low for 6lbs grain and 2lbs fruit

Does it?

It takes 2.5 pounds of grapes to make 1 bottle of wine. Considering wine (11.5 - 12% ABV) is twice the alcohol percentage as beer we could assume that one bottle of wine (750 ml) might equal 1.5 - 2 liters (let's say a half gallon) of beer @ 5.5% ABV. That being said, you added only a half gallon's worth of gravity at the very most if cherries and grapes were equal in fermentable sugar content (cherries probably are higher hence why I rounded up to a half gallon).

If the total gravity of an average beer (5.5% ABV) equalled 1.055 (or 55 gravity points) and was 5 gallons and we divide that by 10 to arrive at what the total gravity of a half gallon would be, we get 5.5 gravity points. Subtract that from your 1.038 and you get 1.0325. Not a big difference at all.

Remember, the majority of fruit weight is water and the sugar content depends on how ripe the fruit was and how fertilized it was (organic fruit generally contains more sugar per pound as it isn't bloated with water from fertilization).

All this being said, if your efficiency was lower than my original guess of 80% like somewhere around 70-75% the Beer Recipator's estimation still holds up.

Thanks for the reply about the O.G. I'm not really worried about it,since I wanted the alcohol content fairly low, but my main question was about whether there would be undissolved sugars in the fruit after boiling for a little less than 5 minutes, that wouldn't read on the hydrometer. The cherries were washed, halved when pitted, and frozen for a couple days. Oh yeah, and I was inquiring about pasteurizing the fruit for secondary.

For the cherries, i would have added them to a fermenter because the yeast can find all the sugars that are present in them. As long as the skins are broken, the yeasties can find what they need. I really dont know what difference it is that you boiled them.

As for the cherries, just heat them on the stove top in a pan stirring often. Let them get to 160 and keep them there for 15 minutes. Dont let it go above 180 or you get pectins. Maybe you could just boil them since it doesnt seem to matter for this beer. I would still keep them to just 160F tho.