First brew - went all wrong!

So, I just spent allll day brewing a Delirium Tremens Clone.
I entered the recipe in Beersmith, things seem to be ok, I added the water specified (around 7 GAL). Did everything, up to the boil (still boiling at the moment).

I measured the gravity and the volume of water just after adding the sugar and spices. The gravity is at around 1.030 for a volume of around 6gal!!! The recipe was to end up with a 3 gal batch. Anyone has any idea as to what went wrong??

I added some liquid malt extract that I had on hand, maybe about 500ml. Hopefully that'll bring the gravity up a bit, and I'll be ok for a bigger batch.

Any advice???

 

What was the OG supposed to be?

Did you temperature correct the pre-boil gravity reading?

The gravity will increase with the boil as you boil off fluid, did you setup your equipment profile and set your batch size correctly in beersmith? Did beersmith estimate a 6 gallon pre-boil volume? Or did it estimate a lower pre-boil volume for a 3 gallon batch?

 

Also if beersmith told you 7 gallons for mash and sparge water but had a different pre-boil volume it's possible that you were supposed to leave some sparge water behind.

 

The OG was supposed to be 1.072.

I just re-measured after adding the LME and some more boiling. Its at 1.05 right now. Beersmith estimated a pre-boil of 7gal for a batch of 3 gal (at least that is what I got from it?)

Some screenshots included.

 

Hah...I just saw the fault....I entered 8.5 lbs of grain while in reality I only used 6.5lbs (which was what I wanted for the 3gal verison!) Beginner/user error grrrrr!

Still, if I boil it off until I reach my target OG should it be ok?

edit: still though, with 6.5lbs of grain BS tells me to add 6.81 gal of water... Only 0.2gal less.

 

Yes I corrected the gravity readings, I didn't check pre-boil, only post-boil (well, at the current boil time). I don't know why I didn't. I had planned to verify it pre-boil but somehow forgot

I think I'll cool it now and call it a night.

 

How did you estimate your boil off rate? 90 min is a long boil for an ale.

My measured boil-off on a 9 gallon kettle is more like 1-1.2 gal/hr not 2.1

Just something I noticed when looking at your recipe, since if you calculated that incorrectly then BeerSmith would calculate your pre-boil volume needed incorrectly and you mash/sparge water.

All in all, I wouldn't worry too much. It will probably taste fine and have a little less alcohol in it.

The great news is you can always try it again!

 

Hmm then maybe my boil-off was the issue, either way it sure overshot a lot.
I didn't sparge actually I was doing BIAB (although I had a recirculation pump going on).

I ended up boiling for probably 45mins more to try and boil-off some more water. I guess I'll know in a month how it turned out...
Its in cold-crash outside at -25C (-40 with windchill!)

 

Beersmith is a useful tool. You tell it what the numbers are and it crunches them for you.

It does an excellent job. Feed it bad data and it becomes worthless GI/GO

You've told beer smith the following.

2.1 gallon/hour boil off

0.75 gallons of trub loss

These are both excessively large.

As a comparison my setup has 0.96 gallon/hour boil off and ~0.25 gallons of trub/dead space/hop absorption losses. This includes volume losses to a plate chiller.

I only mention it to illustrate that all setups are unique. These numbers and your grain-bill error will have screwed the pooch in this instance.

Make sure to measure your true boil off rate from this brew and the actual trub losses. Better data going forward will make subsequent brews more straight forward.

Dialing in the software and your equipment can take a bit of work. Accurate measures are the key.

Default values are rarely useful.

Best of luck going forward mate.

 

Thanks, and yeah ill sure learn from this. Somehow I thought I had decent right boil-off values, I remember googling them what other ppl had to get a idea, even though no 2 setups are the same. Anyhow...with luck it will still be drinkable, otherwise I'll just do another batch sooner!

 

Sounds like a good plan. More brewing is never a bad thing

Also to mention. If you're looking for a really good BIAB calculator for volumes and lots of other things you should check out @pricelessbrewing 's website.

His Great calculator for BIAB

There are also a couple of bits and bobs on BIAB in my sig below which might be some use going forward.

 

double post

 

Thanks! I'll have a look. I'm already looking forward to the next brew. Even though this one didn't end well (although I'll only really know that later), I've used my full system and got my workflow, next time it'll be faster!

 

Well, this morning fermentation is slowly picking up:.

One more possible error occurred to me this morning. I used a big 5gal jug of bottled water + another smaller one of 2 gal when I started my batch. Are those quantities usually reliable? Does the 5gal jug usually contain exactly 5gal, or sometimes a little more? I'm thinking that might've been another reason for having too much volume.
Otherwise it would mean that after grain absorbtion and mash, 90 boil, only 2 gals were lost (which I guess is also possible).

 

If this was your first - ever brew, why not just brew a Belgian clone extract kit from one of the big brands? It makes things MUCH MUCH simpler, everything is measured out, and all you have to do is just follow the directions.

 

I guess I like to complicate things ;-) I figured I'd go all grain anyway so why not do it right away. Plus building the whole rig with PID and all was half the fun. Its also a good learning experience.