OG Coming out too low, ideas?

[boomslang]

Hey Guys, rookie question here.

New to all-grain and brewed my 4th beer this way a few days ago. It was a strong brown ale. Was shooting for over 7% ABV.

For a 5L batch I used 1.9kg maris otter, 200g 60L, 50g chocolate and 50g flaked barley.

My OG, adjusted for temp, came out at 1.044. I'll still get beer, but why's it so low?

I mashed in an insulated brew bin with an element to make sure my mash temp was 66 degrees celcius for the entire hour. Will it be a problem with the temp conversion or my mashing method?

TIA x

 

[thekraken]

How much water did you use? Did you sparge, how did you sparge? What was your strike temperature?

Can you describe in more detail your mash tun with a heating element? Did you recirculate while firing this element?

From what I could gather from your recipe beersmith is telling me I should expect an og of 1.096, abv 9.9%.. That's with a brewhouse efficiency of 70%. It's telling me I'd need an bh efficiency of 32% to hit an og of 1.044, that's pretty concerning.

 

[bucketnative]

How did you crush the grains? Most low OG situations involve an insufficient crush of the grain.

 

[boomslang]

How much water did you use? Did you sparge, how did you sparge? What was your strike temperature?

Can you describe in more detail your mash tun with a heating element? Did you recirculate while firing this element?

From what I could gather from your recipe beersmith is telling me I should expect an og of 1.096, abv 9.9%.. That's with a brewhouse efficiency of 70%.

Strike water vol was at 6.6L, sparge was 4.2, due to trub and all that other jazz I got about 5 litres into the fermentor after the boil. The mash tun is as I described really, it's insulated but as an element in the bottom to ensure a constant temp. And yeah I did warlauf whilst the element was on. Sparge method was batch sparging.

 

[Norselord]

What was your goal for original gravity?

I am on about my 6th AG batch, and rather than try to figure out what i am doing wrong - i am just trying to figure out how to fix it.
I measure post mash OG (pre-boil) with a refractometer, and it is consistently low.
So i just boil 30-45 minutes or so before starting the 60 minute timer and making the bittering hops addition.
The additional boil will get my pre-boil in the ballpark, although i am certain it kicks my color up a few degrees.

The OG is likely off due to sparging (rate or type), maybe pH, is the grain mixing well when you dough-in? Are you hitting your mash temps?

 

[thekraken]

Do you have a false bottom or anything to keep the grain off the heating element? My concern here is scorching.

You recirculated manually or with a pump? I'm wondering if you cooked your enzymes.

 

[plazola86]

How much water did you use? Did you sparge, how did you sparge? What was your strike temperature?

Can you describe in more detail your mash tun with a heating element? Did you recirculate while firing this element?

From what I could gather from your recipe beersmith is telling me I should expect an og of 1.096, abv 9.9%.. That's with a brewhouse efficiency of 70%. It's telling me I'd need an bh efficiency of 32% to hit an og of 1.044, that's pretty concerning.

32% efficiency! There has to be more than 1 thing going wrong. Did you crush your grain or make sure it was crushed. I saw a post a while back about someone trying to use cara as base malt.

 

[boomslang]

32% efficiency! There has to be more than 1 thing going wrong. Did you crush your grain or make sure it was crushed. I saw a post a while back about someone trying to use cara as base malt.

Everything was crushed! Recipe was spot on. Baffles me, maybe a problem with my hydrometer?

 

[boomslang]

Do you have a false bottom or anything to keep the grain off the heating element? My concern here is scorching.

You recirculated manually or with a pump? I'm wondering if you cooked your enzymes.

There is a false bottom so no worries about scorthing anything, i'm giving it a think now as to what else it could be.

 

[SanPancho]

also- maris is technically a base malt, but if i recall it doesnt have nearly the diastatic power of two row, six row, pils, wheat, etc.

you might not have alot of diastatic power in that grain bill. at least, not enough to make up for some other mistake like pH being too high/low, bad crush, etc.

its a little hard to figure out since 5L is an odd batch size. might be worth looking up.

 

[boomslang]

What was your goal for original gravity?

I am on about my 6th AG batch, and rather than try to figure out what i am doing wrong - i am just trying to figure out how to fix it.
I measure post mash OG (pre-boil) with a refractometer, and it is consistently low.
So i just boil 30-45 minutes or so before starting the 60 minute timer and making the bittering hops addition.
The additional boil will get my pre-boil in the ballpark, although i am certain it kicks my color up a few degrees.

The OG is likely off due to sparging (rate or type), maybe pH, is the grain mixing well when you dough-in? Are you hitting your mash temps?

The wort tasted sweet as hell so I'm guessing this may be a problem with my hydrometer.

 

[thekraken]

Everything was crushed! Recipe was spot on. Baffles me, maybe a problem with my hydrometer?

Maybe. Just check your hydrometer in some tap water, or ro/distilled water if your being really picky. It should read 1.000 SG. What was the temperature of your sample you checked OG with? Temperature correction calculators are great but still work better the closer you actually are to your hydrometer's calibration temperature.

What was your strike water temperature? Can you describe your technique for maintaining mash temp? Again, I'm wondering if you might have cooked the enzymes.

 

[jerbrew]

I agree with thekraken. You could be denaturing your enzyme pretty early on, especially if your mashing directly on top of an element and even more so if its not an ultra-low watt density element. How are you controlling the temperature? PID or a simple on off? where is the temp probe? is it an ultra-low or low watt density element? Have you ever done an iodine test to make sure you're mash is fully converted?

 

[dyqik]

If you normally do medium strength pale beers successfully, then the pH could have been different enough for this strong darker beer that it was too acidic and the mash didn't fully convert in the mash time. Do you have any idea about the hardness of your water, or other mineral content?

Denaturing enzymes with exposure to heat etc. would make that worse.

 

[Sadu]

I brew 5 litre batches and last time I used 2kg of maris otter I got a 9.4% barleywine. Something very wrong here. My vote is either a bad hydrometer of enzymes getting cooked. Try getting a new hydrometer, its worth having a spare anyway. And try a mash with no direct heat applied - get to the strike temp and insulate well.

 

[boomslang]

There was a false bottom on the mash tun/brew bin, so nothing was cooked. The method for maintaining temp would be the temp probe keeping the temp at 66, turning on and turning off automatically as time went on and it began to cool down.

 

[thekraken]

Where is the temp probe in relation to the heating element? Is this a pid control, thermostat control, etc? Any chance of over shoot, even localized overshoots?

 

[boomslang]

Where is the temp probe in relation to the heating element? Is this a pid control, thermostat control, etc? Any chance of over shoot, even localized overshoots?

Temp probe is right next to the element, thermostat control too so i'm by no means worried about an over shoot.

 

[Chanoc]

I would go for metering error...
I´d expect a few points for low conversion or whatever..
Temoerature of sample may accounto for some, but not that much.
Let it run and find out later.
Get iodine drops to test for incomplete conversion but maybe too late for now.

I´ve had a few homebrews so may not make sense...
But feel free to ask...
I promise to answer when in better condition...