OG off the mark... what do I do?

[RDoughty]

So I brewed (first time) a Golden Draak (Belgian Strong Dark) clone yesterday and all went very well. When I wrapped up - I checked my OG reading and it was 1.102 (its a big beer). I thought that was right in line with my target so I pitched my yeast and closed her up... Today, looking back over the brewing notes - I notice that the target should have been 1.107-1.109....

I pitched with a starter so now (24 hours in) it is fermenting like crazy.

Any thoughts on what I should do? Have I ruined this brew? Can I hit my FG target of 1.025 and still be OK? I am pretty sure that it will still be "drinkable" but what would you say I can expect from this error? Will my final ABV be high or low of the 10.5% target?

One other note, after approx 7 days I transfer to secondary and pitch a high gravity yeast for about 4 days.

 

[LLBeanJ]

I wouldn't worry about being off 5-7 points on a 1.100+ brew. Close enough that most anyone would be hard pressed to tell the difference in the finished product.

 

[Monty91]

I know this is your first brew, but for later down the road...

If you have some good brewing software, you can take some preboil wort, put it in the fridge, and take a gravity reading at the end of your boil. It should be close to room temperature after that and you can see if you should add some DME to bring up the gravity. If your efficiency is consistent, it's pretty easy to calculate how much DME to add to hit your target gravity. Since you measure a sample at the end of your boil, the wort is still hot and you can still mix in some DME.

 

[flars]

The only thing you should do now is make sure the wort temperature doesn't exceed the optimum fermentation temperature for the yeast. The cleanest tastes are usually when the wort is fermented near the lower end of the yeasts range.

 

[Gameface]

I'd say for a beer that big you pretty much nailed the bullseye. Nothing to worry about.

 

[Trox]

Was the recipe extract or all grain, and if it was extract did you add top off water?

Reason why I ask is when you add top off water to an extract batch the wort and water doesn't mix well so your readings will be off; too high you grabbed more wort than water, too low grabbed more water than wort. Nice thing with an extract batch though is that as long as you got the proper volumes the OG should be pretty close to what the recipe calls for no matter what you are reading.

 

[tacks]

If it really bothers you that much, you can wait until high krausen has fallen and add some boiled and cooled DME calculated with brewing software for quantity, or if you're going to put it into secondary, you can put it into your secondary vessel and then rack onto boiled/cooled DME. however, like others I think being less than 10 points off on a beer that big won't matter to where you will wish you had added DME, plus you're adding another factor that could contaminate your beer if proper sanitation it's not followed. FG is also not exact, unless you know how many billion cells you started with, you cannot predict your exact FG, and even then, it depends on the makeup of the wort sugars, pH, availability of O2 etc. As long as it's fine fermenting and you're within a few points, you should be fine.

 

[tacks]

FWIW, if you decide to go the route of adding DME, it appears that for every 4 oz of DME that you add to a 5 gallon batch, you can expect the gravity to rise by 2 points and change. So a pound of DME would raise you approximately 8.5 points or so. This is as calculated on a similar gravity recipe and according to beersmith 2.