High OG on extract kit, full boil

[Locham]

Brewed my first full boil last night, Midwest's Scottish Export 80. My OG came out a bit high, at 1.058, instead of the 1.048-1.054 listed on the instruction sheet. This morning, when I plugged all of the details into QBrew, I ended up with a recipe OG of 1.056, which is within 'operator error' range of my hydrometer reading but is still outside of the 'style' range of 1.040-1.054 for a Scottish Export. QBrew also says that the recipe color will end up at 19°, which is also outside of the style range of 9°-19°. I'm not going to be entering this beer in any contest, but I'm trying to nail down my techniques as I improve on my brewing. Except for the hop schedule, I disregarded the instructions and followed advice from senior posters here on the forum.

Here's the 'grain bill,' so to speak:

6 lbs. Gold liquid malt extract
1 lb. Amber DME
4 oz. Biscuit
8 oz. Caramel 40L
4 oz. Chocolate
2 oz. Special B
1 oz. Peat malt specialty grains
.5 oz. Challenger (bittering, 90 min) 7% AAU
1 oz. Fuggles (flavor, 30 min) 4.8% AAU
S04 Dry yeast

What I did:

I steeped the grains in 1.5 quarts of water at 155° for 30 minutes, then put the grain bag in a strainer and poured a quart of 155°-ish water over it into my warming brew kettle, then squeezed the crap out of the grain bag. I then topped off my brew kettle to the 6 gallon mark.

Once I saw bubbles, I took it off the flame and added my DME and LME, stirred like crazy, and put it back on the flame. It took forever to get back to a boil on my gas stove, and I had to put the lid on it (cracked to allow evaporation). Once it boiled again I added my Challenger hops in a hop bag and started my timer. 60 minutes later, I did the same with the Fuggles. The whole time, it struggled to get to a rolling boil. With 15 minutes to go, I added my clean wort chiller, which almost immediately dropped the temperature from 210° to 205°, after which is slowly rose back to about 209°. After flameout, I chilled the wort down to 70° in about 20 minutes and poured it into my demijohn through a series of strainers which appeared to aerate it very nicely. I added the rehydrated yeast, and it's in my closet fermenting away at about 63° right now.

Here are my takeaways:

1) Hop schedule from the instructions was based on a partial boil. I probably need to research the hop schedule to account for a full boil next time.

2) Get an outdoor propane burner (ordered Bayou Classic SQ-14 last night).

So...was my process wrong, or was this just a wrong kit to make a within-style Scottish Export?

 

[earwig]

What Qbrew told you the OG should be is what you should have hit. If you were supposed to end up with 5 gallons at the end, and you did...its close to impossible for you to not hit the OG. With extract brewing all of the sugar conversion was done for you when the lme/dme was created.

I hope this helps.

 

[Locham]

Yeah, I just plugged everything into Beersmith, too, and it came up with a recipe OG of 1.055, with color and estimated ABV also in the 'red', outside of style. So perhaps nothing was wrong, it's just that the Midwest kit, when brewed as instructed, was never going to make an in-style scottish export...

Glad that my technique seems on, but a little annoyed, I guess, at Midwest's product. Caveat emptor, I guess. That'll teach me to brew before checking out the recipe first!

Cheers,

Ken

 

[helibrewer]

Yeah, I just plugged everything into Beersmith, too, and it came up with a recipe OG of 1.055, with color and estimated ABV also in the 'red', outside of style. So perhaps nothing was wrong, it's just that the Midwest kit, when brewed as instructed, was never going to make an in-style scottish export...

Glad that my technique seems on, but a little annoyed, I guess, at Midwest's product. Caveat emptor, I guess. That'll teach me to brew before checking out the recipe first!

Cheers,

Ken

I almost always end up tweaking the Midwest recipes because I brew slightly larger batches. They post their ingredients so you can always pre-load them in BeerSmith and see where they sit. If you want to try experimenting with Classic styles, buy Jamil's book Brewing Classic Styles, it is oriented toward extract and steeping and contains award winning recipes for every BJCP style