Finished up another Kolsch

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dpalme

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and put it in the fermentation bucket. Mash temp was running a little higher than normal (154) and my boil off was a tad more than I was shooting for.... but I ended up with around 4.8 gal in the bucket.

OG came out at 1.056 recipe was calling for 1.050 so that ran a little higher than normal...guess I should expect it considering the higher mash temp.
 
You're high because you're low on water. If you top off with some water you should be at 1050 and closer to 5g. Dropping .06 shouldn't take that much water right?
 
The higher temp will not affect the OG. It will affect the FG, however. Your wort has more unfermentable sugars, so your FG will be a few points higher than expected.
 
@rklinck - but is that true? I would think a higher mash temp would extract more sugars overall. That said, those sugars would have more unfermentables leading to a higher FG too. So, my thoughts (making up gravity numbers):

@144 - you might have OG of 1.050
@158 - you might have OG of 1.054

For FG:
144 wort - ferments to 1.008
158 wort - might be able to ferment 50% of the extra 4 points leaving 1.010 (2 points of unfermentable)

Because unfermentable sugars are measured in the wort, the OG must be impacted.

As for dpalme's post, do you have the pre-boil gravity? I wonder if you boiled too long.
 
@rklinck - but is that true? I would think a higher mash temp would extract more sugars overall. That said, those sugars would have more unfermentables leading to a higher FG too. So, my thoughts (making up gravity numbers):

@144 - you might have OG of 1.050
@158 - you might have OG of 1.054

For FG:
144 wort - ferments to 1.008
158 wort - might be able to ferment 50% of the extra 4 points leaving 1.010 (2 points of unfermentable)

Because unfermentable sugars are measured in the wort, the OG must be impacted.

As for dpalme's post, do you have the pre-boil gravity? I wonder if you boiled too long.

Mash temp (so long as it is within reasonable limits) should not affect the OG. The one caveat is that with a lower mash temp you may need to give the mash a little longer to complete conversion. That being said, I get complete conversions with a 149 degree mash in 60 minutes.

I think you are a bit confused about how you get more unfermantable sugars with a higher mash temp. It is not that additional sugars are created; it is that the mix of fermentable to unfermentable sugars is changed. In either case, you will end up with a set amount of sugar (say 50 gravity points per gallon). With a low mash temp, you can get a mix of 42 fermentable and 8 unfermentable. With a higher mash temp, you could get 38 fermentable and 12 unfermentable.
 
Mash temp was higher than I wanted, so in essence I'll have a lower alcohol content and from what I've gathered a little more body....oh well, it happens.

Air lock is bubbling up like mad....the last couple of batches took several days before the fermentation kicked in....down 1 day - 29 to go!!

I didn't check OG pre boil, just post. I only boiled for around 55 minutes, I actually pulled it up a bit short since I knew I was running high on the temp and low on water.

I was trying to compensate for the outside temp, just miscalculated.
 
I noticed tonight that despite only having around 4.8 gallons of beer in the bucket, the foaming was higher than normal to the point it was coming up into the air lock.

Never had that happen before....
 
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