Gravity

[yakimabrewer]

So I brewed my second batch of home brew Saturday night, a Snow Cap Ale clone from the HTB 250 commercial beer recipes. Everything went super smooth, filled the house with some great smells, got the wife involved a little bit. It was very enjoyable.

I have a question about the gravity. Here is the fermentables from the recipe, and then I will ask my question following it:

3.5# Light DME
5.2# Light LME
1.0# Crystal 80
0.33# Chocolate Malt

Steep the crushed grains in 0.66 gallons of 155 degree water for 30 to 45 minutes (I did 45 min). Let bag drip dry and then add grain tea, DME and water to make 2.5 to 3.0 gallons and boil. Add LME with 15 minutes left in boil.

I altered it a bit, heating 2.0 gallons of water in my brew kettle while I was steeping the grains in a different pot. I sparged the grains with 160 degree water from the brew kettle and then added the tea back to the brew kettle.

Finished the recipe, chilled the wort to 80 degrees within 25 minutes. Splashed into the fermenter, and brought the final volume to 5 gallons with water.

The recipe's OG is 1.071. I took an OG after the water addition just before pitching the yeast and got 1.056, adjusting for temperature. I woke up in the morning (about 7 hours later) and it was already fermenting, but I took another gravity to check, and I got 1.056 again. So where did I go wrong? I have been going over and over the recipe trying to determine where my screw up was, but I can't figure it out. Why is my OG so low? Did I not get a good "yield" from the grains? Any ideas?

Also, I tried making a starter for this one after reading about the benefits on here, and expecting my OG to require more than 100 billion cells, and that is the way to go! My last beer took ~18 hours to start, and once it started it took a long time to really get going. This beer (the snow cap) had a nice thin foam after about 7 hours (maybe earlier even, that is just when I woke up), and by 12 hours it was rippin'!

 

[DMartin]

When you added the water to top it off to 5 gal, it never mixed thoroughly, and most of your sugar stated on the bottom. Don't worry, as fermentation progresses it will slowly even out.

It's not possible to get too low gravity when using extract, unless you didn't follow the recipe. The Crystal and Chocolate malt don't contribute very much sugars, just flavor and color. (I think you said 'sparge' when you meant 'mash.' you're not really doing either, just steeping the grains)

By my calculations, 3.5# DME and 5.2# LME in 5 gal water will produce a SG of 0.069, every time, no matter what your hydrometer says.

 

[DirtyDirty]

You're OG is fine. You just got a bad reading because you did a partial boil and it is nearly impossible to get a true reading when mixing the water and wort together. Steps and recipe look good. You're fine.

 

[unionrdr]

Yup. Def sounds like you didn't get the chilled wort & top off water mixed up real well. I pour the chilled wort & top off water through a fine mesh strainer on top of the fermenter,which also aerates it pretty good.
Then use my paddle to stir it roughly for 5 minutes straight. Then test.

 

[yakimabrewer]

Nice, thanks for the reassurance! I was wondering about that, if the water had mixed thoroughly enough for a reading.

 

[DMartin]

Yep the denser wort stays at the bottom.

I added some math to my first post.

 

[yakimabrewer]

Still working on the terminology. When I said sparge I meant that I rinsed the grain bag with 160 degree water until it ran clear, instead of just letting it drip dry as the recipe said. Before I read what you wrote, I thought that there was more available sugar in the grains, so rinsing would get some of those sugars out. After reading your reply, I see that the grains are more for color and flavor than sugar.

I dumped the water in on top of the wort in the fermenter aggressively to try and help a little with the aeration, so I had thought that should have mixed the final wort well. When I got the low reading I suspected it was due to uneven mixing of the water and wort, but I thought maybe I screwed something else up.

Thanks again for the tips!

 

[djfriesen]

As I understand it, specialty grains, as they relate to extract brewing, yield little to no fermentable sugars. This is because they lack the quantity of enzymes necessary to convert the starches in the grains to fermentable sugars. AG brewing has a base malt (2-row, Maris Otter, etc.) that provides these enzymes for starch conversion.

So you may have performed the act of sparging, but you didn't accomplish what AG brewers strive to do with sparging: rinse the maximum amount of sugars from the grains, because there was very little, if any, sugar present in your grain tea. Typically, you can steep your specialty grains according to recipe instructions, and then add extract on top of that (all or half, depending on your preference), and begin your boil there.

That said, everything looks good, and I bet you'll be enjoying fantastic beer in no time. Snow Cap is one of my favorites this time of year, and if the clone recipe is close, and you give it time to mature, it will be a very good beer for you.

Cheers!

 

[helibrewer]

Actually therearefermentable sugars in speciality grain, just no enzymes (they are denatured in the roasting of the grain). The starches are converted to sugars in the roasting process. You steep to dissolve these crystalized sugars. Most speciality grains have an SG in 1.030's

They don't contribute a lot of fermentables because they are used in smaller quantities. They are primarily a color/flavor contributor. Next time you have some specialty grains around, pop a few in your mouth and chew them up, you will find them quite sweet.

 

[DMartin]

The starches are converted to sugars in the roasting process.

that doesn't sound right, but I'm willing to be proven wrong.