Really High OG?

[devilishprune]

So tonight I brewed my 2nd batch (A pale ale with specialty grains) and after I poured the wort into my carboy before adding the yeast I took the OG reading. To my surprise, the reading was 10 points higher than it was supposed to be. My recipe was as follows:


Brew Type: Extract Date: 3/24/2010
Style: American Pale Ale Brewer: David
Batch Size: 5.50 gal Assistant Brewer:
Boil Volume: 6.91 gal Boil Time: 90 min

Brewing Steps Check Time Step
1-2 Days Before Brewing Prepare Yeast Starter
Amount Item Type
1 Pkgs American Ale II (Wyeast Labs #1272) [Starter 4 oz] Yeast-Ale

3/24/2010 Clean and prepare equipment.
-- Measure ingredients, crush grains.
-- Prepare 6.91 gal water for brewing
-- Steep Specialty Grains
Amount Item Type
12.0 oz Caramel Malt - 40L (Briess) (40.0 SRM) Grain
4.0 oz Carapils (Briess) (1.5 SRM) Grain

-- Add water to achieve boil volume of 6.91 gal
-- Estimated Pre-boil Gravity is: 1.041 SG with all grains/extracts added
Boil for 90 min Boil Ingredients
Boil Amount Item Type
90 min 6 lbs DME Golden Light (Briess) (4.0 SRM) Dry Extract
15 min 1.00 oz Summit [18.50 %] (15 min) Hops
15 min 1.00 items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 min) Misc

-- Cool wort to fermentation temperature
-- Add water (as needed) to achieve volume of 5.50 gal
-- Siphon wort to primary fermenter and aerate wort.
-- Add Ingredients to Fermenter
Amount Item Type
1 Pkgs American Ale II (Wyeast Labs #1272) [Starter 4 oz] Yeast-Ale

Now, the two things that come to my mind are that the preboil volume wasnt right making my wort extra concentrate, or that the dextrine from the carapils
malt is making the OG higher because there's some unfermentable sugars in there.

What leads me to believe the volume might be off is because I didnt have an accurate way to measure how much water I put in there in the first place. I filled a 6.5 gal bucket up almost to the top and poured it in my pot. Then I added my steeping grain tea, which I later realized would add more volume. I added 2 qts to that, so I adjusted my boil time to 90 minutes to get the correct batch volume for the liquid that I had.

A way that I guess I could check if my volume is right or not is visual inspection. Does anyone here have a 6.5 gal carboy in a milk crate? If so, is your 5.5 gallon batch above or below the top of the crate?

I just did a quick (rough) measurement of the milk crate it was in to find a volume. I measured the height to the top of the beer to be 10 inches, and the width of the crate to be 13; then I subtracted .5 from the diameter to account for the thickness of the glass and the small distance between the edges of the two containers. I used the following formula:
10*6.25^2*3.14=1226 in^3
Put that into google converter to get 5.3 gallons.

Do you guys have any ideas? What went wrong here!

 

[Walker]

What gravity were you expecting to get? I nerver saw that actually listed in there.

At any rate... I don't have mine in a milk crate, and I don't know if our 6.5s are identical, but I have marked the outside of my carboys and can measure things. This might give you a good approximation.

Here's a shot of one of my 6.5's that is about ready to rack. You can see marks for 5, 5.5, and 6 gallons on it and how that related to the distance from the floor. There is some angle on the shot, but 5.5 was about @ 12.25 inches on the tape.

 

[Netflyer]

Did you take the preboil gravity? Did it agree with your preboil estimate? I usually take that preboil estimate and let it be a guideline for how much sugar was actually in the batch. So after you steep your grains, bring your batch to a boil, add your DME and other fermentables and then remove a small sample of wort. Let it cool down and take a gravity reading. 10 gravity points higher at this point would mean you added more DME than you thought if you actually did put in 6.91 gallons to the kettle or you steeped the carapils at the correct temp, like 154 for 45-60 min and converted some of the sugars however you wouldn't have gotten 10 gravity points from that much carapils. Just FYI DME adds 44 gravity points per #/Gallon, so 1# in a Gallon of H2O would give you a gravity of 1.044 ... If you want to make a 5 gallon batch and end up with 1.040 you would need 5 * 40 = 200 gravity points, divided by the points that a # of DME gives, 44 = 200/44 =4.5# of DME... your program has figured out based on the fermentable sugars that your preboil gravity should be around 1.041 ...
So the questions are, where were you at preboil, and then when your boil was over what was your gravity? If it was 10 points higher at the end of the boil you can just dilute the wort with clean water until you get the gravity you desired.

Possible sources of error here are the amount(s) of water boiled and added and the amount of DME you actually added (did you weigh it out, was it premeasured?)

I would often not realize how much evaporation occurred during my boil and end up with a more concentrated wort than I expected... I just dilute er' down or keep it higher if I don't care that much about the OG.

 

[Walker]

If it was 10 points higher at the end of the boil you can just dilute the wort with clean water until you get the gravity you desired.

I generally don't recommend doing this because adding water will not only dilute the gravity, but it will also dilute everything else about the beer. IBUs, hop flavor, hop aroma....

Now... If the problem is that your batch is actually short on volume, that explains the high gravity, and it also means that all of those other things will be higher than you expected, so adding water is OK and will bring it all back in line. But (really more of an issue for AG folks), if the volume is correct but your gravity is high because your efficiency was higher than expected, then I don't recommend adding the water because of the effect it will have on the hop profile.

 

[Netflyer]

I generally don't recommend doing this because adding water will not only dilute the gravity, but it will also dilute everything else about the beer. IBUs, hop flavor, hop aroma....
.

I was thinking, considering it is an extract batch he may have evaporated more than he thought and concentrated it in so doing and since he was going to add water anyway... but geeze the recipe had a 6.91 gallon on it and I didn't even ask him if he was using a large kettle or if he was doing a less than full boil version... I was thinking he was adding water at the end anyhow but now that I look at that he was probably doing a full boil. I agree with you, I never add water if I go too low with my AG full boils for that exact reason.. .I want all my water involved with all my ingredients thanks for pointing that out man.

 

[devilishprune]

I did do a full boil, and I had hoped that there was close to 7 gallons in there.

My expected OG was 1.050, according to beersmith. I followed the recipe as written (except for the water amounts, I suppose), and the 6 lbs of DME was already weighed out. I added the C40 and carapils by weight also.

I don't guess this is really that big of a deal, I can figure out the volume thing when I bottle but I just wanted to know for next time. I think that I will take a preboil gravity next time just to be safe.

Thanks for the picture, I think that your 5.5 gallon is a little higher than mine (I hope).

At any rate, my beer was fermenting like crazy this morning, so I;ll just hope for the best. I guess the worst that could happen would be I have a concentrated beer? So what, its still beer.

 

[Walker]

Thanks for the picture, I think that your 5.5 gallon is a little higher than mine (I hope).

Just note that my marks were made by measuring 1 gallon at a time in my highly accurate Dollar General ice tea jug and then drawing a line with a sharpie after the 5th and 6th dumps. The 5.5 mark was eyeball'ed in there. That's how I marked one of them anyway...

For the others, I just sat them next to the first and drew the lines at the same place.

So... is my 5.5 gallon mark accurate? Hell no. Is it accurate enough for me? Hell yeah.

 

[Netflyer]

So I plugged this into Beersmith and it calculates the final volume should be 4.4 gallons for 6#DME+.75#C40L+.25# of Cara to get you 1.060 so that should mean you have about 4.5 gallons in your carboy. Beersmith agrees with your recipe that if the final volume were 5.5 the OG should be 1.049 ...

 

[devilishprune]

Yeah I was hoping that that wasn't the case. I was actually trying to do a larger batch this time because I wanted to make sure that I got 5 gallons into bottles, but it seems like it backfired.

I'm sure thats what happened, though. next time before I brew I'm going to make volumetric measurements on all my carboys.

Do you guys mark your brewpots also? If so, with what?

 

[Netflyer]

I do it with a stick made of cpvc... I used 4 cup measuring cups and carefully measured out a gallon and poured that in my #1 Kettle, I then used a sharpe marker to put a line where the water level was and wrote a 1 next to it. Do that up to as many gallons as you need to mark up the stick. Then I just use the stick to figure out how much I have from there on. BTW I have two kettles so I used the other side of the stick to calibrate the other kettle's volume on.

 

[Walker]

I do it with a stick made of cpvc...

I scored and sharpied marks on my Big Plastic Spoon for the same purpose.

 

[devilishprune]

Great ideas. I think I'll do the spoon thing too, since that's less equipment for me to worry about. Do you mark your carboys just with a sharpie?

 

[devilishprune]

I just brewed another batch tonight, an amber ale, and I had the same problem

I think that this time I've tracked it down to some extreme boil off during my boiling. I measured 6 gallons going into the brew pot, and then when I put it into my bucket fermenter, I got 4 gallons.

So...is it possible to boil off 33% of your volume? My boil didn't even seem that vigorous.

This time, I just topped it off with a gallon of water. Will that bring it back to what my original recipe intended?