I just dont understand this. Need brew day help

[cpferris]

Ok, so for my first batch I suffered from low efficiency due to 2 main things:

1. I missed my mash temp.
2. My 15g stainless has 1.5g of deadspace under the false bottom that never got good contact with the grain.

I am brewing a 6g batch and my expected OG should be 1.063, but needed 8.25 gal pre boil vol. I have 14# of grain. Beersmith said I needed 5.5g of stike water. I added 6.5 gal to accomodate for the extra water under the false bottom, then figured i would decrease the sparge volume by that 1g. I recirculated every 7 min during the mash to keep the water under the false bottom circulated. I nailed the 152 mash temp (though I did add some direct heat toward the end of the mash and the temp actually rose to 156 for the last 9 min. I immediately removed the heat and removed the lid to accomodate. I ended up with 4.5g of first runnings.

I am batch sparging so I added 4.25g of 177F sparge water, stirred like dickens, let sit for 10 min then drained the remaining 4g. I ended up with 8.5g (instead of 8.25g) of pre boil volume. So according to beersmith, if I got 70% efficiency my pre-boil gravity should have been 1.059. If I got 55% efficiency I should have had a pre-boil gravity of 1.046. However I got 1.026. What the hell happened here?

Should I add some table sugar after the boil to try and bring the OG up closer to where it needs to be? If I added 2# wouldnt that raise me .018 in gravity?

ANything else I should do? I am also thinking I need to reduce my bittering addition.

Please help!

 

[kharper6]

What are you using for your measurements?

If you are using a hydrometer did you do the temp calculations?

Also if you're shooting for 6 gallons post boil and you're boiling for 1 hour at a rate of ~1 gallon boil-off per hour, I think your preboil volume is too high.

 

[Terek]

That is strange because you kept your temp. Did you us a ph stabilizer? That helps dramatically. Also I noticed your sparge water seems a little hot (177) I usually go with around 169.
Anyways what I would do is do a 2 pot boil and boil the second one longer with no hops or additions to just lower your final batch size. That will kind of concentrate the wort down and get ur gravity up. Mabe condense it down to a 5.5 or even a 5 gallon batch?
I'm no brew master, but I have done this before and it turned out all right.

 

[cpferris]

Aha! That might be it. I am using a hydrometer and forgot about the temp asjust. Unfortunately, I didnt look at the exact temp when I checked it after sparging. But even if I assume it was 148F my 1.026 goes to 1.0.45. So that makes me feel 100x better.

At this point should I take another temp adjusted reading at flameout to see roughly where I am? If I needed to add table sugar I would need to do it while the wort is still hot.

As for the boil vol...it is 3F here with crazy wind. I did a sample boil last night in similar conditions and lost 2.25g from the boil. So hopefully I got that right.

THanks for the tip about temp adjust (this is my 2nd brew ever)!

Let me know what you think makes the most sense with taking another reading and potentially adding sugar.