Original gravity problem

[bbedell]

I appreciate any advice that can be given here. I brewed my first IPA this weekend based on this recipe:

https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/homebrew-recipe/deschutes-fresh-squeezed-ipa-clone/

Brew day went pretty well (other than a broken carboy). I was very surprised to find that my original gravity was only 1.044 (via hydrometer, taken during cooling process). This was my third brew, second all grain. Never had OG issues in the past. Only difference with this one was I used 1qt/lb of grain to mash in, whereas I used 1.25 on prior brew. Any thoughts on why my OG undershot the mark so much?

Beau

 

[seatazzz]

What was the volume you used to sparge, and the temperature? I also think your strike volume was a bit too low to convert enough sugar. I go with 1.75 qt/lb of grain...it's a thin mash but my conversion is pretty good. Of course it depends on your equipment as well. I usually want about 7.5 gallons at the start of boil, so whatever I get from my strike I subtract from 7.5 and that's my sparge volume. Based on your recipe, following 1.25 qt/lb, you should have struck with 5 gallons and sparged with at least 3 to get your preboil volume. I would suggest, don't fear using more water to strike. With a thicker mash you're risking dough balls that you may not find which can hurt your efficiency. I'm also a big fan of adjusting your boil time if your volume winds up higher than planned.

 

[doug293cz]

Not enough information about your process, volumes and SG's to diagnose your issue, although missing the OG target by that much suggests that your conversion efficiency was very low (you didn't convert anywhere near all the starch to sugar in the mash.) Depending on your process, you could have also had issues with lautering efficiency. Since mash efficiency equals conversion efficiency times lauter efficiency, either one, or both, being low will adversely affect your mash efficiency.

Things needed to diagnose your low efficiency (other than the grain bill provided by the recipe) are:

• Details of your sparge and lautering process
• Strike water volume (which we can calculate from your mash thickness)
• SG of wort in MLT at end of mash
• Pre-boil volume and pre-boil SG
• Post-boil volume and post-boil SG

One item that may have affected you is your mash thickness. Thinner mashes (higher water to grain ratios) convert faster than thicker mashes, so it's easier to get more complete conversion with thinner mashes. Why did you only mash at 1.0 qt/lb for this brew?

Brew on

 

[bbedell]

This was definitely a much thicker mash, which was my first thought about where things went wrong. I had to use 1 qt/lb in order to make the mash fit in my tun (only have a 5 gal tun).

Using the calculator on Green Bay rackers I used 13.5 qts of 168 degree water with my 13.5 lb of grain to reach 150 degree mash temp as recommended on the recipe. Let it sit for 1 hour, then sparged with 170 degree water to collect a total volume of 7 gallons pre-boil. I did not get a pre-boil gravity, unfortunately.

I did a 90 minute boil, and ended up with right around 5 gallons post boil. Had a small boil over right at the start of the process which is prob why I ended up short of my 5.5 gallon goal indicated in the recipe. (I've experimented with my boil setup and found that I typically lose right around 1 gallon per hour during my boils)

Any additional thoughts?

In the future, it looks like I need to make a 10 gallon tun if I'm going to do higher ABV brews? Also, do you think it's worth continuing with fermentation given how low the OG was? I was thinking if I can get down to 1.005 then I can maybe get a halfway decent 5%+ beer, but not sure how realistic this is?

Thanks again for any help

 

[mkelly601]

Ferment on, you still made beer. You will not have the beer you originally intended, but you may just end up with a perfectly fine session beer.