Very low OG

[brownsbrew]

Last month I brewed an IPA, everything went great. Last night I brewed the same IPA. I used 6.5 LBS light DME and 1 LBS grains. I boiled 3 gallons and sparged with .5 gallons of hot water. It took me 2 gallons to top off (apparently about .5 gallons evaporated in the boil). Essentially, everything was exactly the same as the last brew session. EXCEPT, last month my OG was 1.048 and last night my OG was 1.030. I have no idea what I could have done wrong. I was very careful to blend the wort and the water I used to top off as to not get an inaccurate reading. I would love to hear your ideas on what this could be. It should be sitting at the 1.048 mark.

 

[RedIrocZ-28]

Well, what did the recipe call for as the OG?

Are you sure you thoroughly mixed the wort last time? You could have gotten a denser sample.

Though I am rather new, the numbers you put up don't seem to suggest an OG of 1.048 with only 7.5lbs combined. Efficiency maybe?

 

[DuckAssassin]

I am pretty new to this, but here is my take after a bit pf research. This is not that irregular for people who partial boil. What probably happened is that the wort was not mixed entirely, and your sample came from a portion which was more water than other portios of the wort. It is my understanding that with extract, you generally don't have much fluctuation in OG.

 

[carnevoodoo]

Last month I brewed an IPA, everything went great. Last night I brewed the same IPA. I used 6.5 LBS light DME and 1 LBS grains. I boiled 3 gallons and sparged with .5 gallons of hot water. It took me 2 gallons to top off (apparently about .5 gallons evaporated in the boil). Essentially, everything was exactly the same as the last brew session. EXCEPT, last month my OG was 1.048 and last night my OG was 1.030. I have no idea what I could have done wrong. I was very careful to blend the wort and the water I used to top off as to not get an inaccurate reading. I would love to hear your ideas on what this could be. It should be sitting at the 1.048 mark.

I'm betting you still didn't mix carefully enough. Next time shake the hell out of it and then check it.

 

[brownsbrew]

I am pretty new to this, but here is my take after a bit pf research. This is not that irregular for people who partial boil. What probably happened is that the wort was not mixed entirely, and your sample came from a portion which was more water than other portios of the wort. It is my understanding that with extract, you generally don't have much fluctuation in OG.

The recipe calls for an OG of 1.048. You are probably right. I did take 2 readings last night. The first one was 1.026, I then shook the fermentor like crazy and took another reading. That time was 1.030. I didnt try again after that.

 

[carnevoodoo]

the thing is, there's no real efficiency swing that great with DME. It has a set amount of fermentable sugar in it, and there's no way it ould be that low in a 5 gallon batch.