Missed OG...again

[ESPY]

I'm just about ready to follow Janx's advice and throw away my hydrometer. I have yet to hit any OG targets. Although my latest result was off in the opposite direction of all my others...it was way high.

After performing several mini mashes by heating the grain on the stove and sparging through a strainer, yesterday was my first attempt to use my 5-gal cooler as a mash/lauter tun. I was brewing a dry stout from 4.5 lbs of grain and 3.3 lbs LME and OG was supposed to be about 1.045. I measured 1.076!!!

I hit my target mash temp (153), but after about 40 minutes it had dropped to about 150. I tried to mash out by adding boiling water, but that didn't do a very good job of raising temp and I don't think it ever reached past 165. Then I tried batch sparging with 185° water and that didn't seem to bring the temp any higher either. I'm thinking that my temp control problems means that I overmashed and thus the high OG. Sound right? What else could have caused such a high gravity?

Thanks,
SP

 

[Dude]

What else could have caused such a high gravity?

Thanks,
SP

Sounds to me like you took a gravity reading before you had a full volume? If you take a reading with 3 gallons of wort, the reading will be high until you dilute it to 5 gallons.

 

[Dude]

Something is definitely wrong with your reading, even if you got 100% efficiency from your partial mash (which you didn't probably closer to 60%), the OG couldn't be higher than 1.056.

I think you took a gravity reading before you had 5 gallons in the pot or the fermenter.

 

[ESPY]

I think you took a gravity reading before you had 5 gallons in the pot or the fermenter.

I've been known to do stuff like that before, but not this time. I topped off to 5 gal and then took gravity reading. Maybe I looked at the wrong scale or something but I would think my number would be much different. I don't know.

SP

 

[Dude]

With the fermentables you listed, even in a perfect yield, it would be impossible to get an OG above 1.056.

Something is definitely up!

 

[ESPY]

I've checked my hydrometer in plain water and it reads 1.000. But I wonder if it's possible for it to be off. If I wanted to take another "calibration" reading by boiling up a samll amount of DME, is there a way to calculate the gravity if I use x amount of water and y amount of DME?

 

[Kaiser]

You can also use sugar. its cheaper than DME

For Plato (most hydrometers have both scales) the formula is

deg Plato = ((weight sugar) / (weight sugar + weight water)) * 100%

The maltose/dextrin ratio (determined by mashing schedule (mainly temp and time)) should not really effect you efficiency. The mash-out and sparging temps however should.

Kai