What do you do when you miss your OG? BeerSmith?

[RonnieBBrewer]

I'm a newbie to brewing. I just brewed my 5th batch (extract) and for the first time, I missed my projected OG. I've purchased BeerSmith 2 from reading that you can adjust your boil time or add DME in the final boil to get the OG you need. Supposedly, when you purchase BeerSmith, it's in the 'normal' mode and to get the proper adjustments that need to be made you have to change it to the 'classic brew' mode. Does anyone have an idea how to do this? Thx.

 

[sherma]

Hmmm. I've used Beersmith for a while and I'm not sure what you are talking about. I was able to edit everything from the start. The only "classic" stuff I know about is the "classic recipe" view when you have the preview pane on and you are browsing thru the recipe list.

You should just be able to edit your ingredients and your boil time.

 

[Dynachrome]

First, try Brewmate or one of the other free programs.

How far off are you?

If ti is just a couple places in the third decimal, don't worry about it.

 

[Dynachrome]

If your gravity is too low, you can add malt extract. I suggest always keeping a bag of light DME around for this purpose (and for yeast starters too, but that's for another discussion). In most cases, the small amount you'll be adding won't contribute significantly to the flavor of the beer, so you don't have to worry about off-tastes. Adding 1.75 oz. of light DME will raise the OG of a 5 gallon batch 1 point (0.001).

Linky

.

 

[RonnieBBrewer]

First, try Brewmate or one of the other free programs.

How far off are you?

If ti is just a couple places in the third decimal, don't worry about it.

The expected gravity for the kit is 1.042 - 1.046. Mine was 1.036. This was after cooling before pitching the yeast. A little late for DME. After reading some online blogs, I now see I should take a preboil gravity reading something never mention in any of the kits I've done.

I guess there's nothing I can do at this point? I brewed a Belgian Witbier, the first lite beer I've brewed.

Thanks!

 

[dpatrickv]

If I miss my OG I shrug my shoulders and don't worry about it. Unless I'm off by a massive amount I don't care.

 

[stratslinger]

The expected gravity for the kit is 1.042 - 1.046. Mine was 1.036.

That's a bit tough to swallow - typically, if you're brewing extract, you're going to get what you shoot for, period. So, a couple questions:

1) Were you brewing a kit, or were you brewing a recipe you read somewhere (HBT, a magazine, etc)?

2) Did you do a full boil, or did you do a partial boil and top off to 5 gallons in your fermenter?

I suspect that either you used a recipe that was less than accurate in its stated figures (though you said you used BeerSmith, so this line of thought can probably be dismissed) or you used a partial boil and topped off in your fermenter.

When topping off in your fermenter, it's very common to not get the top off water and the wort mixed 100% homogenously, and the gravity sample you pull can be a little more heavily weighted towards either the wort or the water. Rest assured, if you added the weights of extract and the volumes of water that you plugged into BeerSmith, then you wound up with the OG that BeerSmith projected - it just may take a bit of time (fermentation will take care of this!) for that to all blend homogenously.

And as for checking pre-boil gravities and adjusting, that's more of an all-grain thing. Folks who brew with grain tend to check their wort pre-boil, to make sure that they really extracted as much sugars as they expected (or, in some cases, no more than they expected) so they can add extract or water to adjust the gravity before they begin boiling. Particularly if you're doing a partial boil, the math you'd have to do to figure out gravity adjustments would make my head hurt a little bit.

EDIT: I forgot one final source for your gravity being off: your hydrometer itself! Have you calibrated it? Check it with some water at 60 degrees - it should read 1.000. If it does not, then you know how far off (high or low) your readings are. Also, were you measuring wort at 60 degrees? If not, you need to correct for temperature - I think BeerSmith has a built in tool for that.

 

[RonnieBBrewer]

1) Were you brewing a kit, or were you brewing a recipe you read somewhere (HBT, a magazine, etc)?

It was a kit.

2) Did you do a full boil, or did you do a partial boil and top off to 5 gallons in your fermenter?

I steeped the grains 30 minutes in 1.5 gal of water on an infusion table top burner. I use it because it keeps the temp around 155 F. at it's lowest setting. At the end of the steep, I sparge the grains with .5 gal of warm water then bring it to a boil. When it begins to boil, I add it to a 20 qt kettle with 1 gal of boiling water and bring it to a boil, shut off heat add the LME then bring to a boil. Boiled for 60 min. I cool the wort with a reverse flow wort chiller into my fermenting bucket which contains 2.5 gal of room temp water.

EDIT: I forgot one final source for your gravity being off: your hydrometer itself! Have you calibrated it? Check it with some water at 60 degrees - it should read 1.000. If it does not, then you know how far off (high or low) your readings are. Also, were you measuring wort at 60 degrees? If not, you need to correct for temperature - I think BeerSmith has a built in tool for that.

I took the gravity reading in the bucket. The wort was at 70*, yeah I forgot I did get that reading calculated to 1.0373. And I need to check the hydrometer, it was brand new (those things break easily!) and I didn't think about checking it out in 60* water.
Thanks again.

 

[stratslinger]

I took the gravity reading in the bucket. The wort was at 70*, yeah I forgot I did get that reading calculated to 1.0373. And I need to check the hydrometer, it was brand new (those things break easily!) and I didn't think about checking it out in 60* water.
Thanks again.

OK, so it was in the bucket - but was it a partial boil with top-off water, or was it a full boil? If top-off water, there's your most likely (and most common) answer.

 

[RonnieBBrewer]

OK, so it was in the bucket - but was it a partial boil with top-off water, or was it a full boil? If top-off water, there's your most likely (and most common) answer.

I boiled 3 gal down to 2.5 added to 2.5 gal water. I've done this with the previous 5 batches I've done and hit my OG each time. Only difference with this beer from the others is the others were stouts, Old Irish Ale, Dry Rye Roggenbier and a Bourbon Barrel Old Ale, beers that were much more heavy. Maybe I need to increase the amount of wort I boil? With 3 gal in a 5 gal kettle boil overs are less worrisome. Thanks

 

[stratslinger]

Nope - if you got your volumes right, and you definitely added the correct amount of extract, you did NOT miss your OG. Couldn't happen. Period. It was either a mixing or a measuring problem.

 

[RonnieBBrewer]

I checked the hydrometer. It's off by .002 to the negative @60*. With the correction that calculates to a little over 1.039. I guess I'll have to live that. All the measurements came out to 5 gal in the fermenting bucket on the nose. The only thing I can figure is maybe the couple of cups of wort that are left in the brewing kettle may have made the difference (the problem with using a reverse flow chiller).

I'll get it figured out on the next batch. Thanks for all your help!

 

[duboman]

Nope - if you got your volumes right, and you definitely added the correct amount of extract, you did NOT miss your OG. Couldn't happen. Period. It was either a mixing or a measuring problem.

+1
You did not miss your OG at all and it will be what the recipe stated it would be unless you totally screwed up the volumes of water added to the wort.

In extract brewing it is virtually impossible to miss the recipe's OG because it is all extract with a given gravity potential.

This happens all the time and the off readings are due to the inability to adequately mix the top off water with the denser wort regardless of how efficiently you try to get a good mix between the two- just relax and have a beer and all will be good.

As for BeerSmith, remember, it's a tool to help you brew, not teach you how to brew, just because it tells you something doesn't mean it's correct, it's all based on the input given

 

[Gameface]

Just want to reinforce what others are saying. Either the amount of extract you added was wrong (seems unlikely with DME, but with LME maybe some of it is still stuck to the container), or your water volume measurement is wrong (but if you're adding the same amount to the same fermenter that you always add that's probably not it), or your hydro is wrong (but you've checked it and now know how close it is), or your wort wasn't as thoroughly mixed as you thought it was (this is by far the most likely scenario).

 

[stratslinger]

It might help to understand better if you look at it this way:

When you're doing an extract brew, you're adding a known, defined amount of extract (basically, a specialized type of sugar) to a known, defined volume of water. There is no conversion that occurs. There is no chemistry that occurs. Just the addition of a measured amount of sugar to a measured amount of water. Even if you have steeping grains - you may add a couple points of gravity from them, but there's no conversion of those grains, because you're not mashing them, just steeping them. Figuring out the resulting OG is simply a matter of doing the math, and BeerSmith knows all the figures to do that math for you.

Which isn't to say that you didn't use a 3lb can (or jug, or whatever) of LME and you just couldn't get that last 4oz out of the can and into your brew pot. That'd make a pretty signiifcant impact on your OG.

But that last 1 or 2 cups that you left in your brew pot? Eh. It'd be the same gravity as what you added to your top off water, so it's clearly more concentrated, and maybe you lost half a point there. Probably not much more than that. But for the future, assuming you've got a dip tube in your pot (or even if you don't), when you're draining through your chiller, try tilting the pot towards the tube near the end to minimize the loss in your pot. I still do this sometimes on my big kettles, even though I scale my recipes big enough that I don't have to, I still "get greedy" and want that little bit of extra wort in my carboy. (I also typically wind up with messy blow-offs on those batches.)

 

[RonnieBBrewer]

I always tip the kettle. It must not of been thoroughly mixed. Thanks everyone for your comments! I understand this a little better now.

 

[RonnieBBrewer]

but with LME maybe some of it is still stuck to the container),

Wasn't that. I always poor some of the hot wort into the bottle and swish it around a little and dump it back in. Plus I warm it up so that it will pour a lot easier.