Help with what happened - Missed preboil gravity

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boicutt

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Hi guys,

I'm brewing right now and for the first time something happened that I don't understand. I didn't hit my pre-boil gravity... by a longggggg shot. No idea why. Mash temp 158F for 60min. Batch sparge, 2 steps.

7 lbs 13.9 oz - Golden Promise (3.0 SRM)
13.8 oz - Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM)
10.4 oz - KILN Coffee Malt (160.0 SRM)
6.9 oz - Roasted Barley (550.0 SRM)
1.lbs 1.1 oz - Lactose

Target Pre-Boil gravity, 1.046, target hit 1.019?!?!

I usually am off by .002-4 but this... I dont even...
 
All I can think of is... my mash seemed watery. I order from my LHBS and they grind all in 1 bag. After the water mash and seeing it in the trash bag, I think they confused 3.5kg for 3.5LBS.... im disappointed.
 
So i'm most likely right. I put the same recipe but with 3.5LBS of Golden Promise and est. OG is 1.034. I got 1.030. I'm right up my alley with where I usually fall.
 
You may have hit the nail in the head. I'm not sure where you live, but in the US, I wouldn't trust most shops with metric measurements. I'd have converted to pounds/ oz before presenting the grain bill to them.

That said, did you adjust your hops to attempt to still make a beer?
 
That's a bummer. Have any extra extract lying around? I'd boil some up for a few minutes and add it in to get closer to your target.
 
Unfortunately I only had 1LBS of dry extract laying around, wouldn't even get me close, so instead of wasting even more ingredients, I just tossed everything into the fermentor anyways as an experiment. I know this will only get me a 2% beer, roughly, and most likely will be too sweet to drink, but hey, might as well try it out instead of throwing it out right away. Smallest krausen I've ever seen.

I had my yeast ready anyways.
 
You could have boiled longer. Get the wort to a reasonable pre boil gravity, and then conduct a normal boil from there (adjusting hops to fit the volumes.). You would end up with a lot less beer, but you would have reasonable alcohol levels. Just a thought.
 
To get even close to 1.055 (original target) i'd have to boil off more than half of it. I considered but seemed more of a hastle. I see time as money.
 
In addition to seeing "what you get" out of it as far as a 2% beer, you can sort of treat it like a big yeast starter and plan 2-3 beers off the yeast cake - Maybe a Barley wine or RIS or something you need a lot of yeast for, and then also a regular beer or two off of some of the yeast. At least then it could serve a purpose.
 
Exactly what I came up with last night. I was like "meh at least I can try washing yeast for the first time". Thanks for the suggestion! :)
 
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