Not hitting target OG!

[Traughber]

I purchased the Pumpkin Ale kit from Midwest Supplies. After reading some reviews and comments of others that have purchased this kit, I made some modifications to the recipe. I increased the amount of sugar from .5lbs to 3.5lbs, instead of 30oz of canned pumpkin, I used 72oz of fresh, and increased spices a bit. I submitted this new recipe to Beersmith, and it calculated a new OG of 1.076. I followed the Beersmith instructions to the tee, and when I took my reading I got a 1.048. I'm sure I'm making some kind of noob mistake and would appreciate some more experienced advise as to what I'm doing wrong.

 

[RM-MN]

The first thing you are doing wrong is making changes to a kit without knowing the consequences and without a base to compare from. The second is likely from doing a partial boil and then adding top off water. When you add top off water to the base wort that wort is much more dense than water and unless you really stir it up your hydrometer sample will be much more water than wort. When you do an extract kit and it tells you the expected OG, that OG is what you get, not what you measure because the extract has a known amount of sugars in it and if you add the correct amount of water, you get the predicted OG.

 

[Calder]

The wort was probably not mixed well enough. The heavier sugars drop to the bottom. It takes a lot to fully mix. No worries, the yeast will find he sugars.

Adding 3 lbs of sugar to the recipe will make it dry out. To support the spices, you probably want some body, and adding the sugar does the exact opposite.