Davst
Member
Hi we just brewed our first or second batches of beer this weekend. I've been studying up on homebrewing for the last few weeks and we felt prepared to take the plunge so to say.
Anyways, we encountered some really odd stuff. We created all our recipies in beersmith to check that they were valid and that we were on the right track.
First recipie was a Partial mash, we followed the beersmith recipie here and we were fine except that we had a bit more volume after the boil, but.. when the gravity was measured it landed at 1.030 (room temperature wort) instead of 1.042 which was where we were expecting, adding this into beersmith with the end volume game a efficiency of 5%.. ? so to save the batch i did some quick math to figure out that we'd get close to the gravity we were expecting and added some post boil extract to save it.
Even though the volume turned out to be a little larger 17.3 instead of 16 liters this should only have affected the gravity by 0.001 according to beersmith. I'm wondering where did all the extract go?
Second batch. Spooked by the abyssmal efficiency of our first batch, we were very cautious witht he second batch which was a All grain pale ale. Boil and evertything went great, we let the mash run off properly (no sparge biab) and the wort was sticky and rich indicating what should be a great wort. We took a pre boil reading cooling a sample of the wort and the gravity was at 1.026? wtf? we figured we had the same **** luck with our efficency which this time was a 39% or soemthing so we added exctract to the wort and brought it up to 1.042.
Just to be sure we did a post boil check of gravity. and got a 1.070? wtf? so we added extra water to bring it to the 1.051 we were looking for.
First obvious thing: Yeah we might have read instruments wrong.. but we checked it against a second hydrometer, we also checked for bubbles on the hydrometer.. didi the reading at the surface of the wort and I'm generally sure of that we read it right.. was concerned it was broken till we checked it against another hydrometer.
My question.. when should we check the wort for a reliable OG? and why is the OG going all over the place like this?
Anyways, we encountered some really odd stuff. We created all our recipies in beersmith to check that they were valid and that we were on the right track.
First recipie was a Partial mash, we followed the beersmith recipie here and we were fine except that we had a bit more volume after the boil, but.. when the gravity was measured it landed at 1.030 (room temperature wort) instead of 1.042 which was where we were expecting, adding this into beersmith with the end volume game a efficiency of 5%.. ? so to save the batch i did some quick math to figure out that we'd get close to the gravity we were expecting and added some post boil extract to save it.
Even though the volume turned out to be a little larger 17.3 instead of 16 liters this should only have affected the gravity by 0.001 according to beersmith. I'm wondering where did all the extract go?
Second batch. Spooked by the abyssmal efficiency of our first batch, we were very cautious witht he second batch which was a All grain pale ale. Boil and evertything went great, we let the mash run off properly (no sparge biab) and the wort was sticky and rich indicating what should be a great wort. We took a pre boil reading cooling a sample of the wort and the gravity was at 1.026? wtf? we figured we had the same **** luck with our efficency which this time was a 39% or soemthing so we added exctract to the wort and brought it up to 1.042.
Just to be sure we did a post boil check of gravity. and got a 1.070? wtf? so we added extra water to bring it to the 1.051 we were looking for.
First obvious thing: Yeah we might have read instruments wrong.. but we checked it against a second hydrometer, we also checked for bubbles on the hydrometer.. didi the reading at the surface of the wort and I'm generally sure of that we read it right.. was concerned it was broken till we checked it against another hydrometer.
My question.. when should we check the wort for a reliable OG? and why is the OG going all over the place like this?