1.022 OG Irish Red??

[jzamora3]

Hey guys,

First post the boards and really enjoy all the info. This is my fourth batch (done two IPAs and a Hefe) and really concerned about my low OG for my Irish Red. My two IPAs were all grain and everything turned out great.

Here's what I did:

2 gallon batch

3lbs 2-row
1lbs Cara 60
1oz. Chocolate

1oz. Northern Brewer at Beginning of Boil (30mins)
2/5 whirfloc tab (10 mins)
1oz Northern Brewer at 5 mins

Steeped the grains at about 155 to 165 for 30 mins.

I pitched about 4 grams of Safale US-05.


Any ideas what went wrong and what I can do to salvage this batch? Thanks again and look forward to any advice.


Happy Brewing!!

 

[atoughram]

Try steeping at 152f for an hour next time - about a gallon of strike water ~165f ought to put you in the ball park. Then sparge with nearly two gallons of 170f water to get a preboil volume of about 2.5 gallons.

I suppose if you wanted to save this batch, you might be able to boil a gallon of water with a couple of pounds of DME and add it all to the fermenter - it might not taste like you had imagined but it'll have some alcohol in it. Also - Check your hydrometer - should read close to 1.000 with plain water in it.

Also - your IBU's with two ounces of NB's are astronomical... (71 IBU's??)

 

[gbx]

Figure out what went wrong and rebrew. Don't try to rescue it, its only 2 gallons. Just let it ride and see how it tastes. It could be an interesting India Red Session Ale and its gonna be so easy drinking you can kill the batch in an afternoon.

 

[RM-MN]

Most of the time when you get a much lower OG than planned the problem is in the milling of the grain. If the grain isn't crushed fine enough you don't get the particles wet through and any dry areas in the grain particle won't have a chance to convert.

 

[kombat]

What RM-MN said.

Also, did you "steep" the grains, or did you "mash" the grains? I'm seeing some base malt and no extract, but you're using the term "steep." In this brew, you require conversion, which means you need to be even more particular with your water temperature and volume. Steeping is when you just soak some specialty grains to "leech" out their (already converted, mostly unfermentable) sugars. Mashing is when you coax the enzymes in base malts to convert starches into fermentable sugars.

 

[jzamora3]

The original recipe was only for one gallon and what I did was just double the amount of all the ingredients (per the instructions for the recipe). I only steeped the grains, again per the instructions. I've done all grain without mashing before and eveything worked great. I'm thinking that maybe I didn't steep the grains for as long as needed? I doubled everything besides the steep time (original only called for 30) but maybe I should have doubled that to 1 hour and it would have fixed the low OG issue? Thoughts on that?

 

[LakeErieMonster]

The original recipe was only for one gallon and what I did was just double the amount of all the ingredients (per the instructions for the recipe). I only steeped the grains, again per the instructions. I've done all grain without mashing before and eveything worked great. I'm thinking that maybe I didn't steep the grains for as long as needed? I doubled everything besides the steep time (original only called for 30) but maybe I should have doubled that to 1 hour and it would have fixed the low OG issue? Thoughts on that?

Steeping is like making tea. You add specialty grains to hot water and flavor/color leech out into the water.
Mashing involves adding your grains to the water and controlling that temperature while (as stated before) enzymes convert starches to sugars. A quick, hot mash (which is what you did, semantics aside) would have produced only a little bit of unfermentable sugars. I suspect that a combination of unfermentables that you got from the high mash, and the short mash time, will yield a beer ~.5% abv when it is done fermenting.

Also, where did you get the instructions/recipe? 71 IBU is not anywhere near appropriate for an Irish Red.

 

[jzamora3]

I recieved the Hopbox homebrew set as a gift about 2 months ago and thats where the recipe came from. The set came with a recipe book and I've used the recipes before and everything came out great.

 

[Hopinista]

Everything's great, I for one love .4% abv hop bomb Irish Reds!

 

[peterj]

Like the others said, I'm not sure how much you can do to salvage this batch or if it would even be worth doing. I would just focus on my next batch.

The first thing I would do if I were you is to throw that recipe book away. It doesn't sound like the author really knows much about brewing. If you're doing all grain you need to mash at a specific temperature. That recipe isn't close to an Irish Red. Way too much hops. And 25% crystal malt is WAY too much for any recipe.

The recipe database on this site is a good resource. Also, Jamil Zainasheff has a recipe for every style of beer in his book "Brewing Classic Styles", and you can find a lot of them online if you don't want to buy the book. Or Northern Brewer puts all of their recipes for their kits online as well.

You had the right idea with doubling the malt and hops for a bigger batch. That should work out fine. You don't need to double mash times though.

I would suggest reading "How to Brew" by John Palmer. It has a lot of information that is very useful to new brewers. You can read the entire 1st edition online here: http://howtobrew.com/intro.html. But some of that information is a little outdated and has been corrected in the newer versions that you can buy.

Good luck and enjoy brewing!

 

[catdaddy66]

The problem with gravity could be in a couple of places. As mentioned before, the grind/crush of the grain may not have been fine enough to get the most sugar out of it. The time (30 min) wasn't long enough to convert all available starch to fermentable sugar. 45-60 minutes is better. Also, as mentioned before, the temp should be lower such as 152-154 for best results. Higher temps stop the enzymatic action which converts sugars to the fermentable variety. Finally, the type of grain and percentage in the overall grain bill can be an issue. You listed crystal/caramel 60 at 1 lb, which would give it 20-25% of this beer. A better amount would be closer to 10-15%. Crystal malts have fewer fermentable sugars than base malts.

I usually use no more than 1.5#'s of crystal in any 5 gallon recipe I make.


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[gbx]

Everything's great, I for one love .4% abv hop bomb Irish Reds!

Its going to be more than that. It will probably finish in the 1.002-1.005 range and be at least a respectable 2%

 

[LakeErieMonster]

I hope it finishes out that low for you, but either way, this is you chance to go eisbock.

Ice ice baby