Low O.G. - O.K.?

[JoeyG2001]

I just boiled my second brew tonight. My first brew gave me a bit of worry but seemed to turn out alright in the end - had some fruity overtones which maybe were the result of some bacteria, but everybody liked it and nobody got sick so I guess it was a success.

I was hoping for this one to go more smoothly. It's an IPA. 6 lbs of malt extract syrup and then another pound I think of powder extract. Plus, we seeped a hefty little bag of grains.

Anyway, the O.G. for the recipe is supposed to be 1.061 to 1.065, but we ended up with 1.052 or so.

The only things that went maybe a bit astray from the directions are that I boiled it a little too vigorously at first perhaps after adding the malt extract and hop pellets. Then, when we transfered the wort over to the fermentation bucket, it said to try to get most of the sediment out, but I tried straining it and it just wouldn't go through except at a slow IV drip pace. So, we ended up with a decent amount of that stuff in the bucket.

Could these things have caused the lower reading? And do you think it'll still come out ok?

 

[TheGeek]

How long did you steep your partial? and did you "sparge" it at all? An issue I had was my brew calculation software was assuming a 60 minute steep and I only did 30 so my estimated and actual O.G.s were off by about .010

Also what temperature did you take the partial up to? I'm not the expert but I know at a certain point you can get it too hot and start to lose efficiency.

 

[ReverseApacheMaster]

Did you do a partial boil and add top off water? If so, the water was likely not well mixed, so you ended up with an inaccurate reading.

 

[JoeyG2001]

I steeped the grains as per the directions for about 20 minutes. The hottest it got was probably 175 or so. I tried keeping it at 160, like the directions said.

I didn't do any sparging. Didn't even squeeze out the bag, because of the tannins and stuff I'd read about. Just sort of picked it up and let it drain out well.

 

[JoeyG2001]

Yes, I boiled about 2.5 gallons, which probably stayed about the same - might have gone up a bit with all the malt extract in there. I added some water to the fermenting bucket ahead of time and then topped it off with water to the 5 gallon mark, with lots of sloshing so I'd get the right aeration.

I did forget to mention this in my original post: when I'd put all of the water in, I had a good three or four inch foamy head on the wort. I couldn't take a hydrometer reading, and I wasn't sure about putting the yeast in on top - plus, wasn't sure if that foam was because of all of the sediment that was in there. So I used the funnel (sanitized) to skim some of that off.

 

[arover]

Exactly when in this process did you take the hydrometer reading? Also, I'm assuming that water was pretty cool when you pitched the yeast (Not that it's really relevant to this question)? Like previously said, if you don't mix your top off water very well before taking a reading, it will be rather inaccurate.

 

[Justibone]

If it was well mixed...

And if it was the right temperature...

And if you've calibrated your hydrometer...

And if you read from the meniscus...

...then you can count on your hydrometer.

If you haven't done/didn't do all of the above, then just RDWHAHB.