First brew - og off the charts

Hey all!

So, i finished my first brew today and it was not without few hickups as expected.

I was aiming for 16L batch with og of 1.055. I forgot to adjust my hops accordingly in brewmate and threw in hops for 19L batch, but didnt realize that until I was done.
After mashing was done I noticed that my second 12L pot was missing so I went with one 12 litre and two smaller pots for boiling and got very high boil off, ending up with just 10 litres of wort. As i checked the OG it was over 2.

I boiled some water and let it cool, topped up and measured og, repeated about 6 times and finished with 22L of wort that had OG around 1.1.
At that point I was really running out of time and had to get to work, so I put the yeast in, closed the fermenter and rushed out.

So, did I manage to mess it up beyond salvage? I was thinking about throwing in some more water straight from tap to lower the OG some more, but as I had already topped up more water than original wort volume I hesitated and figured ill just go with what I got and see where it gets me.

I used brewmate to tune the recipe, and put my effiency to 60% but I am guessing I got plenty more as the OG was so darn high?

Dont know if it even started to ferment but will see once I get off from work.

 

Something is not off. Post more details -- recipe, how you measured the gravities etc.

 

Even putting 60% into the program and getting 80% efficiency, I think you would have had to have used more than 5 pounds too much grain to get the OG so high. I suspect measurement error(s) somewhere.

 

Likeliest possibility is lack of mixing. Extract brews need a LOT of mixing before you measure gravity. Next possibility is an error reading your hydrometer. Lots of break material or bubbles or not enough wort to fully float the hydrometer or just reading the wrong scale. Without a massive error, it would be practically impossible to hit 1.2. Check the gravity tomorrow and see what you get.

 

I didn't use extract but mashed in my DIY cooler mash tun and sparged with continuous sparging.

I did check my OG meter (floating) and I did read the measures wrong yesterday, but the start was somewhere between 1.1 and 1.2 and after topping up with water it was around 1.055. I checked in a pitcher and it did have enough wort to fully float. Mixed thoroughly before measuring every time I added water.

It had started fermenting last night and it's bubbling like a crazy.

Screenshots from the recipe attached.

 

60% extremely low for fly sparge, you got over 80%. Top up didn't mix before you sampled.

80% efficiency at 10L ==> 1.117
80% efficiency at 22L ==> 1.053

 

So, I'm having trouble visualizing your process. A few questions. Did you stick with the mash and sparge volumes in the program? Did you end up with 19L pre-boil? What was your pre-boil gravity? Did you end up with 16L post-boil? Do you really have no deadspace in your mash tun? Have you taken a gravity today?

From your description, it sounds like you nearly doubled your volume with top off water. To end at 1.055, that would put your pre-top off SG at about 1.11, which is very high but not impossible.

 

I used the strike and sparge water volumes from brewmate and had about 18.5L pre-boil, but ended up with only 10L post-boil. I had to use 3 kettles to boil it so that probably explains the huge boil-off rate. (I apparently managed to loose a 12L pot somewhere). I havent measured my gravity today and sadly I didnt measure it pre-boil.

And I did go over the double my volume with top off water as I had to top up 12L on the original post-boil volume of 10L. Wonder how bad it affects the finished brew?

And thank you all for the responses, the help is much appreciated! And sorry about not making too much sense all the time as this is all pretty new stuff to me.

 

Between pablo's analysis and your summary of the process, it sounds like you got about 80+% efficiency and had a ton of boil off. Your post boil gravity of 10L was likely a bit over 1.11 and your 12L of top off brought you to 1.055.

Not sure how this will affect the final product but it will be beer. As long as the OG was where it was supposed to be, it should end up close to what you were aiming for. Keep us posted.

 

I have to adjust my efficiency up and increase the boil off rate bit for the next batch in BrewMate.

Now I just need to start drinking more beer to get more bottles for my increased batch size, what a shame!

Thanks for all the help, will keep you posted.

 

We all appreciate your sacrifice for your art.

 

Happy holidays!

Beer has been fermenting for almost a week and got myself some trouble.

Was away for few days and weather changed from -8c to +10 outside and my room temp jumped up to 24-25c where the beer is fermenting. I got it down to 20c pretty fast when I got home but it probably gets some off taste? And the water lock has gone quiet tooand that got me worried.

 

You might be getting an over-strong boil. You need a rolling boil - not something violent. Your boil-off rate looks too high to me.

 

If it was a few days before the temperature change you most likely will not have any problems. After a few days the airlock bubbling should slow or even stop.

Most fermentations stop bubbling the airlock between 3 and 5 days. The warmer the sooner. It just means the yeast are no longer producing enough co2 to make it bubble. Or the co2 is getting out of the fermenter somewhere else.

The fermentation may continue for a bit longer. Take a gravity reading, wait a day, then take another. If the numbers are the same and it is close to the predicted FG, then fermentation is finished and it is safe to bottle. Or you can leave it for 14 - 21 days or even longer. After the fermentation is finished the yeast will clean up off flavors produced by the fermentation, how long this takes is debated

 

^^^^^^^ This is probably the best that you got. It is possible to get a little more from the grain, but not much more. If I had to guess, I would expect you got a little less than this. As others have noted, your high gravity readings were probably from the wort not mixing properly.

It is possible to figure out your OG from an FG sample if you really want to know what you got. You will need to get a refractometer. If you take both a refractometer and hydrometer reading of the FG sample, you can use on-line calculators to get a reasonable estimation of the OG.

 

I am planning to bottle it at 3rd of January so total time in primary would be 17 days. I could push the bottling back to 10th but not sure if it would help that much? I was also wondering if I should use my left over hops (about 2 grams each) to dry hop as my batch size got larger than expected?

 

I tasted one bottle week ago and it sure was beer.
Nice hoppy aroma and good bitter taste, but it had a bit of "alcohol" side taste to it. From what I've read its probably due temperature changes during fermentation?
It didnt feel "watery" either so I think the added water didn't do too much harm.