Curious Result

[skeaterbait]

In Jan of last year I bought and extract kit for an Irish Red, I only brewed half of it with intent to finish it up in a couple weeks. At the time I did not realize that I would be buying a house and moving, forcing the second half to wait till now. The hops and yeast have lived in the fridge the entire time but the DME and grains have been in a plethora of conditions.

Last night as I was digging out my equipment to brew some recently purchased stuff I came across the IR ingredients. The DME was like a brick but broke up nicely and the sealed bag for the grains was no longer sealed. Still smelled nice though.

Short story longer I decided to brew it anyway just to see how it turns out. Here is the curious part, because I over estimated the veracity of the boil I ended up with 3 gallons instead of the targeted 2.5 but my gravity ended up at 1.052 where the recipe aimed at approximately 1.049.

Granted that's not a huge overshoot but with the grains being old and having added too much water, why would I have ended up over the target gravity?

 

[Cheesy_Goodness]

Just throwing ideas out:
1) You used less than half of the initial recipe kit, or
2) The temperature of the wort was different this time. Unless you considered that, it would throw it off a bit.

 

[DrunkleJon]

Did you use top up water or do this as a full boil? often times when top off water is used you can get stratification where it does not mix in all the way. Otherwise it could happen if you used less extract in the first half. a couple oz (about 3 I think) of DME would be all that is needed to increase 3 gallons of wort from 1.049-1.052.

This was an extract batch with steeping grains right? The grains actually do not contribute any fermentable sugars, they are more for coloring and flavor.

Good point on the tempearature Cheesy

 

[skeaterbait]

Hadn't considered the temp, thanks.

 

[skeaterbait]

Did you use top up water or do this as a full boil? often times when top off water is used you can get stratification where it does not mix in all the way. Otherwise it could happen if you used less extract in the first half. a couple oz (about 3 I think) of DME would be all that is needed to increase 3 gallons of wort from 1.049-1.052.

This was an extract batch with steeping grains right? The grains actually do not contribute any fermentable sugars, they are more for coloring and flavor.

Good point on the tempearature Cheesy

Yes, extract kit with steeping grains, it came with the DME already divided and the LHBS divided the grains for so that should have been ok. I did do a full boil.