Help with high OG

[DtxB Brewery]

I brewed a batch of lemongrass wheat yesterday, OG was supposed to be 1.056, but mine read at 1.084. Any ideas how this happened and what effect it will have on the beer?

 

[Blender]

We will need a bit more information as far as your recipe. If it was an extract batch then the likely cause is that the wort was not thoroughly mixed when you pulled the sample. This is assuming that the recipe was for 5 gallons and you actually have 5 gallons of wort.

 

[DtxB Brewery]

It was extract with specialty grains. 3 gallon boil, added 2 1/4 gallons to carboy, wort was aerated for 2 minutes, then sample was taken with thief. Today have good krausen and lock is pumping like a piston

 

[FlyingHorse]

It's virtually impossible to miss your OG on an extract batch if you hit your volumes and use the right amount of extract (many experienced extract brewers don.t even bother taking an OG, since it's kind of automatic).

Your 1.084 was a bad measurement, likely from insufficient mixing. RDWHAHB, sounds like everything is fine.

 

[DtxB Brewery]

RNWH2HB

Relaxed, no worries, had 2 homebrews

 

[Brett0424]

Sounds like a bad measurement but are you sure you have 5 gallons. If you did a 3 gallon boil with a lot of evaporation and only added 2.25 gallons you may not be fermenting 5 gallons. You would have to have only 3.33 gallons for the OG to be over that much so it's unlikely, just another factor.

 

[ohiobrewtus]

In the future, make sure that you stir very well after you have added your top off water, then take your reading.

 

[conpewter]

I agree that it's probably a measurment error, the fact that you pull the sample with a thief and you massivly overshot your OG is some evidence for this.

Your beer will be fine

 

[jay075j]

What was the temp of your wort?

 

[DtxB Brewery]

I'm pretty sure the sample was mixed very well. My carboy is marked so I'm sure I had approximately 3 gallons of wort to which I added the other 2 1/4 gallons of water. I did check my sample with a refractometer as well and it was 1.084, no correction for temperature was made but the error should not be that significant. I am sure the beer will be fine just wanted to eliminate any errors from my brewing technique Also temperature of wort was 80 prior to the addition of the extra water, so I'm guessing the temp when I took the sample was in the 75 degree range