Gravity Concerns

[outcomethewolf]

Seeking some knowledge from you experienced brewers. I have only made a few batches and have decided its time to start to pay attention to the numbers and what they mean. I bought an all grain kit and decided to not do a BIAB as my usual but instead try a no sparge brew. I have a 10 gallon cooler for a tun and the grain bill is real small so i thought i would try it out. I have read that when doing no sparge you need to up your grain bill by 20%-25% because of the efficiency thing. I purchased a kit so this was really not an option. I did plan on adding some DME to increase gravity but things kinda went haywire. The kit came with 3lbs of honey, instructions said to boil hoiney for 45 minutes. I dont know much about honey but it seemed that boiling it that long will basically convert it to sugar without much honey flavor/smell. The kit included 6 lbs of 2 row and 1/2 lb of honey malt. It stated that OG should be around 1.047-1.052. I checked it as i was draining the mash tun and got 1.020 after i let it cool. I started boil and added hops and honey as suggested. I added 1 lb of DME to boil for last 30 minutes. I'm not sure what the honey would do to gravity and got conflicting info on DME but my gravity at end of boil was 1.064. I did manage to mess up my pre-boil volume pretty well as i came out with 4 gallons in the fermenter instead of 5. I hate to use straight tap water to top off because the water where i live is terrible. I had no extra bottled water on hand so stuck with 4 gallons instead of 5. My boil was for 1 hour.I started with 6 gallons in the tun with the grain and expected to loose some. Gravity turned out alot higher than called for. Is that due to the honey, the DME , the low water amount or a compilation of the 3 that only a noob like me could pull off? I will brew this kit again and would love to be able to compensate where i need to in order to stick with no-sparge. I have a converted keg for boil vessel and 10 gallon Rubbermaid cooler for tun..no HLT at this time. Water temp was 165 going in to tun. 150 is what it was after an hour. i prolly botched that up too , but thanks to the ABV of storebought stuff i wasn't stressing Any input would be appreciated.

 

[eastoak]

i would not buy that kit again. honey will raise your ABV but will not provide much honey flavor, maybe a little bit, maybe. honey will thin your beer out so if you are looking for a beer with body you may not get much by adding honey. honey malt will certainly give you a honey flavor, body and head retention to boot. no sparge brews taste better to me than the traditionally sparged brew and i occasionally will make them. if i were you i would just buy the grain you need to make your beer rather than a kit, there are plenty of recipes on this site or you could search the googles for many good ideas. as for the brew you already have...let us know what happens.

 

[DMartin]

The high OG is due to the low volume. 4 gal at 1.064 would be 1.051 if you had 5 gal. Sounds like you did ok except for the low vol.