Completely Missed target OG

[TryPA]

Yesterday I brewed a recipe of mine that I've had great success with but completely missed the mark on the OG. Maybe someone could shed a little insight as to how I missed this?

The recipe is as follows:

Citrus IIPA

MALT:
9.9 lbs of Briess pilsen LME
2.0 lbs of Weyermann Cara-red (steeped @ 157F for 20 min)

HOPS:
boil 60 mins 1.0 oz Citra
boil 50 mins 0.5 oz Simcoe
boil 40 mins 1.0 oz Citra
boil 30 mins 0.5 oz Simcoe
boil 20 mins 1.0 oz Citra
boil 10 mins 0.5 oz Simcoe
boil 1 min 1.0 oz Cascade

YEAST:
2 tubes of White Labs American Ale

The target OG for this was 1.081. We measured 1.062. Here's what we did:

1) The boil water was ~4.0 gallons. We steeped the grains in a couple quarts of water, and then added that to the boil at 60 minutes.

2) A lot of trub made it into the primary. Tons of hop particles were in suspension when we poured it and a LOT made it into the sample we used with the hydrometer.

3) We used a brand new hydrometer, but it appeared to sit fine in water at 1.000.

4) We got about 3.5 gallons of wort out of the boil, and filled up to the 5gallon mark on our brew bucket with water.

5) We measured twice with two samples. When we couldn't get it anywhere north of 1.062, we tossed a pound of honey in to help bring up the OG.

Anyone got any idea why this was so far off the target OG? Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

[earwig]

Im on my phone and don't have a way to calculate the OG right now cor that recipe but with LME the sugar extraction is already done for you. If you ended up with the correct volume in the fermenter its close to impossible to not hit your OG.

 

[TryPA]

Is it possible that the 1.5 gallons of water I added diluted it too far?

 

[urbanmyth]

There is almost no way to miss OG with extract. Your wort just wasn't mixed up enough. The heavier extract will sink to the bottom of the bucket, leaving a less dense mixture up top. It will be fine. RDWHAHB

 

[TryPA]

There is almost no way to miss OG with extract. Your wort just wasn't mixed up enough. The heavier extract will sink to the bottom of the bucket, leaving a less dense mixture up top. It will be fine. RDWHAHB

I guess that would make good sense except for that I took the measurement from the bottom, out of the spigot. Of note, it did take over an hour to chill down that wort using the bathtub...(yea, i need a wort chiller)

 

[Stauffbier]

According to beertools you should have gotten 1.082.. Maybe your hydro reading was wrong?!

 

[TryPA]

It must have been or else maybe the LHBS didn't measure the LME right? I'm completely confused.

 

[jamoke]

What was the temperature of your wort when the 1.062 reading was measured?

Wondering if a temperature correction needs to be calculated.
At ~145 degrees 1.062 would come out to 1.080

 

[TryPA]

Approx 81F or so.

 

[Stauffbier]

It must have been or else maybe the LHBS didn't measure the LME right? I'm completely confused.

What size container was the LME in? I believe 9.9lbs is about half a gallon..

 

[jamoke]

Approx 81F or so.

Well that shoots down any major temperature correction skew.

20 points is a pretty large OG miss, something is not right for sure.

 

[RM-MN]

It doesn't matter where in the bucket you took the sample, incomplete mixing is the reason you missed your OG. When you use a measured amount of malt extract and mix it with the correct amount of water you always hit your OG. The amount of sugars (which is what you are trying to measure) in malt extract is already set.