Efficiency Issues!!!!!

[BingenBrew]

My friend and I are about to pitch our yeast but our O.G is pretty off. We have read about adding simple sugar to the brew and that should help. We are currently at 1.050 and our target was 1.069. Any ideas on how much should be added to the brew before we pitch the yeast to help with our efficiency problems?!

Any help would be greatly appreciated,

Cheers!

 

[houndsbreath]

Give up some more info. What type of beer are you making? What's your calculated IBU? Porters, stouts and brown ales can easily accomodate brown sugar. Pale ales (to a degree), Saisons and IPAs/ IIPA can handle some cane sugar. I've even made a Blonde ale that used 1 lb honey. I would keep the sugar below 10% of your total grain bill if you decide to use any.

 

[GySgtLynn]

Do you have any DME or LME on hand?

 

[BingenBrew]

Brewing a rye pale ale. We do not have dme or lme on hand. We added a pound of sugar to the brew. Our grain bill was 14.5 lbs.

 

[BingenBrew]

We ended up adding 1.15lb of table sugar prior to pitching the yeast. The goal was to be somewhat dry... this might have overshot that though It's a Rye IPA. The mash temp should have been at 154 for 60 minutes, but about 45min in, the temp was at 142.

The top of our mash-tun (re-purposed cooler) has a large crack in it. It happened maybe a week ago? We were talking about getting a new one... My buddy was convinced it wouldn't lose heat too quickly. It didn't feel like any heat was coming out of it, though. We *think* that is the problem. Prior to this, we've been off target by less than 0.010 for the past couple brews. We've been at this a couple months and have made (countless?) mistakes and try to learn from them.

 

[GySgtLynn]

I would have probably just let it at 1.050 and pitched... but that's just me. For some reason I shiver when I think of using sugar to raise OG.... never tried it though so I don't know. Hope it comes out well for you.

 

[BingenBrew]

Thank you sir cheers

 

[GySgtLynn]

Cheers to you... Did you acheive your desired OG after adding sugar?