What's the OG on this recipe?

[skins]

Hi,

So I should have found some way to measure the original gravity on this beer, but in my infinite wisdom I came up with kind of a crazy recipe that started pretty small in volume, then got bigger. So I never bothered to measure the OG, kind of stupid.

I did some poking around the internet and concocted a hairbrained Russian imperial cherry stout recipe. Here's the recipe. It was supposed to be an extract brew with some extra grains steeped for additional flavor/color. The grains to be steeped were:

1 lb. Chocolate malt (crushed)
.5 lb. Caramel 80L malt (crushed)
.5 lb. Roasted barley (crushed)

However, when I got to the store, they didn't have the caramel 80L. Instead, the clerk convinced me 0.5 lb of caramel Munich malt 60L would be fine. When I got home I discovered that the Munich should be mashed. So, not knowing much about mashing, I just did a simple (probably wrong) mash. I took the 1 lb chocolate, the 0.5 lb munich and the 0.5 lb roasted barley, added to a grain bag, then heated a gallon of water to 165. Poured over grain bag. Kept around 152 for an hour. Drained out the liquid into the main brew pot. Added another half gallon of water at 180 for 12 minutes, did not try to maintain temperature. Drained that into the main brew pot. Then poured another half gallon of 180 degree water over the grain, letting it run into the main pot.

Took that, added another gallon or so (so about 3.5 gallons total), and brought it to a boil. Added 1 oz Magnum pellet hops and 6.6 lbs golden light Briess LME (35 pts/lb). Boiled for 50 minutes, then added 7 lbs of dark LME from the local store (not sure about the points, but I'm thinking it's the Briess that they buy in bulk then sell in smaller containers) and 1 oz Columbus and 1 oz Cascade hops. Boiled for 10 minutes more. Cooled, then topped up with another gallon (so about 4.5 gallons total). Added two packets of Safale 05 yeast.

Fermented for two weeks.

Meanwhile, in a separate container, I took 6.5 lbs of tart cherries I picked off my neighbor's tree, froze them, then thawed them and smashed them in a grain bag in the bottom of a bucket. I added about a half gallon of water and a half a Campden tablet and left it for 24 hours. Then I sprinkled a packet of champagne yeast (Premier Cuvee) over the cherries and racked the beer over that. I waited 20 days, then pulled the cherries out. This was last night. I had a taste and measured the gravity. The taste was pretty darned good, the cherries were a lot subtler than I figured they would be. The gravity was 1.029, and the volume after pulling the cherries out is 5.5 gallons.

What do you think the OG of a beer like this would be? I'm not even smart enough to figure out what the LME would add, but I have no idea how to calculate the contribution from the partial mash. I see people online saying cherries won't add anything to a strong beer, but I think that must mean if you just add them and increase the volume, not if you do as I did and use the liquid you get out of them as part of the volume. I mean, there must be a lot of fermentables in cherries, no?

Thanks for any input!

 

[Yooper]

Well, first "caramel Munich" or CaraMunich is a crystal malt, and doesn't need to be mashed (it's not Munich malt- it's a crystal malt) so don't worry about that part.

A mash requires base malt, and you had none so it was still a steep.

Was the final recipe 13.6 pounds of LME, 1 pound chocolate malt, .5 pound caraMunich, and .5 pounds roasted barley? In 4.5 gallons of wort?

The cherries would add little to the gravity, but I can't figure out why there is now 5.5 gallons of beer- where did the extra gallon come from? .5 gallons of plain water, and the rest cherry juice? That seems unlikely, to get .5 gallons of juice out of the cherries.

If I know the volumes and the ingredients, brewing software will give a pretty close OG.

 

[skins]

Thanks a lot for the response.

Hah, that's funny I didn't need to mash it. I've been wanting to get into all grain forever, but then this last mission made me second guess myself. Eh, probably will still do it when I get more space in the new house. Thanks for the info on that. The interwebs made it sound like I needed to mash it.

I don't quite know where that extra volume came from. Obviously the LME added a bit. I might have topped up to closer to 5 gallons before the initial ferment. I did the initial ferment in a 6 gallon better bucket that I don't have gallon markings on. Basically my plan was to top it up with enough cold water that it would be ok to pitch the yeast, but not so much that when I added the cherries later the final volume wouldn't fit into a 5 gallon carboy I have. I had the cherries in a plastic bucket acting as my secondary and it does have gallon markings on it, so I know it was right at 5.5. I just transferred it to the 5 gallon carboy (my "tertiary") and it fit just right, so I was guesstimating volumes right, but the recipe is still pretty weird. I guess what I'm saying is the original recipe was probably all those things you just mentioned in 4.5 to 5 gallons over wort. What do you think?

 

[skins]

Hey Yooper, I think the point of my last message got buried. I'll re-post the main point here: What I'm saying is the original recipe was probably all those things you just mentioned in 4.5 to 5 gallons over wort. What do you think? Thanks for any help!