Not much fermentation - could be because of insufficient conversion

[doctorjo5]

I did my first real brew in a bad and I used 19.75 lbs of grains. It seemed like all of the grains were soaked and the water was a pretty constant 154 but the gravity was way off from the recipe I was using. Now it seems as though it's barely fermenting and I'm worried it's because there just aren't enough sugars in the wort. Is there anything I can do to get the sugars up at this point to create more fermentation or is this beer just going to be way weaker than it's supposed to be?

This is the recipe I was using: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f76/day-after-christmas-eve-old-ale-128531/

So it is supposed to be very high gravity and abv, but right now it is a very low gravity, something like 1.030. I'm highly disappointed

 

[Bradinator]

What temperature did you take your gravity at? That is only 20% efficiency so unless your grain was very poorly crushed or you thermometer is way off I am not sure how it was so low.

 

[doctorjo5]

When I took the temperature the wort was probably at 75 degrees F or so.

 

[Bradinator]

Hmmm... Was the grain milled at the LHBS? Do you know what your water/grist ratio was?

 

[doctorjo5]

It was milled at the LHBS but I have no idea what the water to grist ratio was. How do you calculate that?

 

[doctorjo5]

At this point, is there anything that I can add to the fermenter to create more fermentation? I know that just pouring sugar in it wouldn't work, but is there anything at all?

 

[david_42]

You can add extract, liquid or dry.

Water to grist is simple. A quart of water is about two pounds. A minimum ration would be 4:1 by weight. You should have had at least five gallons of mash water and about the same amount of sparge water.

BIAB really isn't suited to high ABV beers.

 

[doctorjo5]

Thanks David! I'm pretty sure that my problems are numerous. I used too much grain, not enough water and so my ratio was all off. If I add extract to the fermenter is there anything I should do or can I just pour it right in without any other prep? I figure I'll just use pale extract like the recipe called for.

One last question. Can you possibly explain to me how I could go about figuring out how much extract I want to add if I want to get the gravity of 6 gallons to go from 1.030 to 1.100? Did I screw up so bad that there really is no way to get it back to the numbers I want to hit again?

Edit:
One more question, if I add more extract, I shouldn't have to add any more yeast right?

 

[Bradinator]

I threw the numbers into BeerSmith and it says you would need to add 10.0 lbs of Dry Malt Extract to get your SG up to 1.099. You would need to boil and cool this first though.

 

[Bradinator]

Something else to keep in mind, because your topping off with extract you want to make sure you can fit that extra volume into your fermenter. To be honest I don't really know what the minimum water you can use to boil down that much DME would be, but I am guessing its in the 3-4 gallon range. How much space is left in your fermenter?

Plus because now your adding DME to your wort, its going to affect your hop utilization.

I don't know if this is the best way to approach it, but personally I would give up on the idea of a 1.100 big beer and add only 4 to 5lbs of DME boiled and cooled in 2 gallons of water with maybe 1/2 to 1 oz of hops. I would probably start with 3 gallons of a water and boil for about an hour down to 2 gallons. Once this is done I would add this into my first beer. Basically you would have made 2 beers and mixed them together. Your OG would be around 1.061 with 5 lbs of DME. If you have any fermentation at all from the first batch its going to act like one super huge yeast starter.

I don't use DME often, but its a bit messy so you want to add it to the water as it warms slowly, stirring it the entire time.

On a final note, don't worry too much about messing up. Sounds like everything outside of the water/grain ratio was spot on. I am willing to bet that this beer, though not what you wanted, will turn out very good in the end.

I remember my first all grain adventure... Mashed way to high and I ended up with an undrinkable nasty grain and hop soup!

Cheers!

 

[doctorjo5]

Thanks Bradinator, your answer is reassuring. I will probably take your advice, I figured that it was probably not the best idea to try to get it as big as I originally intended but I'm just trying to relax and have a homebrew while I figure this out. I'm glad to hear that everyone that's replied doesn't think it's just a total wash.

edit: I will set a reminder to follow up when I drink the beer, probably sometime in January:cross: