Steam beer/missed OG

[etoews]

hey guys, first post here and hope i'm doing it in the right forum.

i've done a few rounds now and things have turned out alright. however, on this last batch, i made a steam beer that, when running it through beersmith i should have had an OG of about 1.071. i ended up with 1.047...

yes, the beer was properly aerated (it's a 7 gal. glass carboid, i am large, and yes i usually shake the crap out of these). however, it still came in low. screwing with the formulas in this program, this OG shouldn't even be that high for that style of beer (should be 1.048 or a bit higher to start).

should i be worried, or is there something else i can do to this? it appears to be fermenting nicely so wouldn't really want to mess with it unless i had to. been in primary for about three days now.

thanks in advance for the help.

 

[Palefire]

was this an extract/partial boil brew? i.e. did you add top-off water at the end? If so, you may not have mixed the wort and water fully enough. that's the main way that people get weird OG readings.

1.071 is pretty big for your typical steam beer...want to post the recipe you used?

 

[etoews]

thanks palefire:

started with light dry extract 8# DME

steeped 1#crystal 80L and also 120L .5# for one hour

thanks for any help you can provide. i've done pretty well with my previous batches; this one however is killing me...

erik

 

[etoews]

i would like to edit that that last post:

the grains were steeped for .5 hrs., not the aforementioned one hour...

yes, call me a tool i know it...

 

[wildwest450]

8#'s of dme is only 1.064, according to beer smith. However a partial mash would yield 1.071, you said you steeped which is different. You should always hit your numbers with extract, I too believe it's a mixing issue, you should be around 64 or 65.

 

[Montanaandy]

One thing that I noticed right away is that you used much more crystal than the recipes that I have used call for. The recipes that I used for Cali Common/Steam Beer call for .5 lbs of crystal - you used 1.5 lbs which is really more than needed. I looked at my notes for the extract steam beer that I brewed and the OG was much lower than what you hit (around 1.040). Conversely, the OG in the AG version was around 1.066 - much higher. I just brewed the AG version a couple of weeks ago and it is still in primary so I have not checked the gravity recently which I will do but I need to find out what the FG for this one is supposed to be. The other thing that you don't mention in your OP is the type of yeast used. I have used Wyeast 2112 with great results and Pacman which I am waiting on but which fermented nicely. Montanaandy

 

[Palefire]

Yeah, it definitely sounds like a mixing issue. I'm assuming this was a partial boil? It's very difficult to miss an OG when all the sugars are coming from extract. When you add your top-off water, you have to mix really really well to get a uniform distribution of sugar in the wort. Far more than you'd imagine! As is, you probably just grabbed a sample that didn't have as much sugar in it.

No worries, though, fermentation will mix everything up fine. Let us know how it turns out!

 

[etoews]

thanks guys, will let you know how it turns out.