OG is higher than anticipated!?

[eestisiin]

Hi,

I recently got a brewing system as a gift, it's a noname or rebranded generic boiler, with a pump, mash tun with filter, and so on. So it's my second brew now and the recipe is as follows:

5.3kg IREKS Pilsner 2.5-5 EBC
0.3kg Simpsons Dextrine EBC 1.3-1.6
100g of Hallertau Blanc hops
2x11g Lallemand Diamond Lager Yeast

They say that efficiency should be around 70%

So the OG should be 1.048, but I got 1.058, previous recipe I did was the same case.

Their recipe calls for 60 min and 67c and then mash out 78c for 10 min and then 90min boil. It didn't call for sparging, but I did anyway, as I understand it's a somewhat mandatory thing right? To give more details then here is what I did.

Mash was 5.6kg and 25.6l of water - I mashed for 60min@67c and 10min@78c, then sparged with 78c water so that I would have around 30l of water in the tun and started the boil - pre boil the gravity reading was around 1.050

After the boil I was left with around 25l of liquid and into the fermentor, I got like 23.5 or smth.

My question is - WHY do I keep getting higher OG - is it the sparging? Any other fundamental mistakes? I asked the guys who sell the goods and recipes about the mash and etc, and they said to start with 25L of water and then after draining the malt, add in water until you reach the pre-boil liquid level of 30L.

I mean I'm happy if I'm not doing anything wrong per'se , but I would like to know how to aim for the correct OG as I wanted my Pilsner to be more like 4.8-5ish - rather than 5.8-6ish ABV

EDIT: Forgot to mention - I also got my pH to 5.8ish, so this could also help me get more sugars out right? They don't tell anything about adjusting water chemistry - so maybe that is it?


Thanks and sorry for newbie problems like this - still learning the lingo and terms

 

[RM-MN]

There are two reasons you get higher OG than predicted.
1. Yes, sparging will make a difference. I would expect somewhere between 5 and 15% increase in OG due to rinsing more sugars out of the grain bed.
2. A recipe is a record of what someone else did and their brewhouse efficiency. If the grains got milled finer for your brewing, your mash efficiency and hence the brewhouse efficiency increase. If you have a consistency with the milling, you can adjust the recipe to account for your increased efficiency.

Anectdote. My first all grain BIAB, I used a recipe and expected an OG of about 1.050. I measured my OG at 1.070. After a couple brews like that I started reducing the base malt to account for that. Then I started sparging. Again I had to reduce the base malt.

 

[rburrelli]

Part of brewing is learning what your efficiencies are for your equipment. Apparently you are doing better than the 70% the recipe was written for. If you can, calculate your efficiency and use that as your new percentage going forward. Basically you will be using less malt overall.

 

[DannyBoy270]

they said to start with 25L of water and then after draining the malt, add in water until you reach the pre-boil liquid level of 30L.

Don't do this, you'd just be diluting your wort/beer. What you're currently doing sounds fine. If you are hitting all your volume targets, then as has been said above you just need to adjust the efficiency used in building the recipe. There's several calculators out there that can help with this too; I used the Brewfather app myself.

 

[hotbeer]

The OG stated in the recipe is also based on a specific volume of wort at the end of the boil. Your mashing, sparging and boils might have left you with less wort than the recipe's creator and you simply have a more concentrated wort because you have less water.

Maybe you boiled harder than needed and evaporated too much water. How doe the 25L of wort you wound up with compare to what the amount of beer the recipe is for?

As for diluting to the OG of the recipe, you just need to decide if you want more beer to bottle or the potential of more alcohol content depending on your yeasts abilities. Personally I'd be happy to dilute it and get more beer even at a lower ABV.

 

[eestisiin]

Hey thanks for clearing it up for me! I found the calculator already to readjust the recipe for the next use. Just for clarity, I could dilute down the beer with some distilled/boiled water right?

@hotbeer - After the boil, my 25l was actually what they were aiming for as well, so boil-off was probably fine

So thank you all, I'm one step closer to understanding the magic of beer and all the numbers! I checked the calculator and it seems that my setup efficiency is around 83% (inserted the malts I used and water amounts and kind of reverse-engineered it to match the numbers I got) - Thus next time ill adjust my malt amounts accordingly!

 

[Toxxyc]

There are two reasons you get higher OG than predicted.
1. Yes, sparging will make a difference. I would expect somewhere between 5 and 15% increase in OG due to rinsing more sugars out of the grain bed.
2. A recipe is a record of what someone else did and their brewhouse efficiency. If the grains got milled finer for your brewing, your mash efficiency and hence the brewhouse efficiency increase. If you have a consistency with the milling, you can adjust the recipe to account for your increased efficiency.

Anectdote. My first all grain BIAB, I used a recipe and expected an OG of about 1.050. I measured my OG at 1.070. After a couple brews like that I started reducing the base malt to account for that. Then I started sparging. Again I had to reduce the base malt.

Exactly my story. I got to a point where I used almost 60% of the original recipe's base malts, because my brewhouse efficiency (into fermenter) worked out to 93%. I squeezed and sparged till I was blue in the face to reach those numbers, and it worked. You HAVE to work out and work on your own efficiency, and it will probably differ from batch to batch and recipe to recipe, depending on how you brew on the day, specially if you're a beginner.

I also once made a beer and totally overshot the gravity. I was supposed to have 1.044 and ended up with 1.062. I still get it slightly over from time to time, and because then I often water it down with a hop tea. Works well for me.

 

[RM-MN]

Hey thanks for clearing it up for me! I found the calculator already to readjust the recipe for the next use. Just for clarity, I could dilute down the beer with some distilled/boiled water right?

With the recipe you used, diluting with water would be fine. However, more complex recipes with caramel malts or roasted malts would have their flavor contributions diluted. Where I live we turn up our noses at "watered down beer".

 

[oakbarn]

When people do extract brewing or even partial grain, they are just diluting the Wort to the desired OG/Volume. We started All Grain years ago and we still try to obtain the planned OG. If it is too off from the volume, we compromise somewhat as long as the OG is higher.

One issue with not meeting your OG/Volume is your Hop Additions. Your IBUs may be off if the Volume is not correct.

We "know" our Boil Off rate and try to add any water needed PRIOR to any Late Hop Additions at about an hour (90 min Boil) and 30 min (1 hour boil). Added water is near Boiling. If you do this, you may get a second Hot Break!

There are several Calculators available to help with dilution.

If we have to add water at the end (rarely ever) , it has been boiled.

We believe that the planned OG is important in the flavor of a beer. If the ABV is higher, we think it gives a different flavor.

We had issues with a new LHBS we tried and their crush was terrible. We only tried them twice. They are no longer in business. Rather than the OG being too high, it was much lower.