I was making a dogfish head 90 min ipa clone. Mashed 16 lbs 8 oz pilsner 2 row Belgian and 1lb 10.7 oz amber malt @ 159*f for an hour. Sparged @170 and ended up with about 6.5 gallons. Recipe called for 7.5 gallons of wort pre boil. I took a sample and cooled it to 75*f and had a pre boil gravity of 1.084. I used the beer smith software to calculate the post boil gravity of 1.088 after a 105 min boil. The software said to add 1.1 gal of water. I added .75 gal of water, which gave me a little over 7 gallons of wort. I boiled for 105 min. At the end of the boil i had a little less than 6 gallons. I took a gravity reading of 1.066. What happened? How did the gravity drop so much with only an addition of .75 gal before such a long boil. Do the proteins that drop during and after the boil add to the pre boil gravity? Trying to learn from my mistakes.
First all grain. What went wrong
- Thread starter rmg2800
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Off of the top of my head, adding the water is what made the huge drop in the OG.
If you cooled the sample, it seems like the preboil OG would be accurate. I'm just thinking out loud here, but if you had 6.25 gallons of 1.084, and then added .75 gallons of water (1.000), then that would not make such a huge difference in the OG.
In other words, one of the readings is incorrect. If you didn't take a SG after you added the water, it's either the original preboil Sg reading, or the post boil OG reading. Adding the water probably made a huge difference, by diluting the wort.
If you cooled the sample, it seems like the preboil OG would be accurate. I'm just thinking out loud here, but if you had 6.25 gallons of 1.084, and then added .75 gallons of water (1.000), then that would not make such a huge difference in the OG.
In other words, one of the readings is incorrect. If you didn't take a SG after you added the water, it's either the original preboil Sg reading, or the post boil OG reading. Adding the water probably made a huge difference, by diluting the wort.
Very likely. The first wort on the kettle will be the heaviest and is likely to stratify. I stir and stir and then start taking samples until I get consistent readings. A refractometer helps this go faster.
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