What does a higher O.G mean?

[SDouglas82]

I just finished brewing Northern Brewer's Chocolate Milk Stout (all grain) and finished with an O.G of 1.060. The directions have an O.G of 1.049. I was wondering what this means in regards to efficiency and my finished beer. This is my 3rd all grain experience and still new to the numbers of home brewing. Any advice/help would be greatly appreciated. I added the link to the recipe below.

http://www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/allgrain/AG-ChocolateMilkStout.pdf




Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

 

[flars]

That is quite a discrepancy in OG. I don't think mashing at a much lower temp could account for the difference. Hydrometer or refractometer? Hydrometer reading temp corrected and hydrometer reading 1.000 in distilled water, at calibration temp? Wort correction factor established for the refractometer? Final volume according to recipe volume?

 

[chickypad]

The estimated OG of the recipe always depends on the recipe's batch volume and expected efficiency. You might have had a lower total volume, or a higher efficiency, or both. I agree 11 pts is a fair discrepancy to be explained by efficiency alone but I guess it's possible. I don't know what they set their kits at. It's a good idea to take really good notes and find a way to accurately measure volumes, then over several batches figure the actual efficiency on your system so you can adjust all recipes to hit your targets. Of course you need to be make sure your tools are calibrated and you are measuring correctly as flars pointed out.

 

[SDouglas82]

I actually finished with 5 gallons of wort. Thanks for the responses.


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

 

[PHDrunk]

I plugged the recipe into Brewers Friend --- it's designed for 5.5 gallons into the fermenter, 75% efficiency (OG 1.050). Often times "5 gallon" recipes are designed with an extra half gallon in the fermenter to account for the wort loss when you siphon off the yeast cake. Seems like you ended up with too little volume. Had you ended up with 5.5 gallons, OG would have been 1.054 which is at least a bit closer.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[SDouglas82]

Unfortunately, my kettle is only 30 quarts (7.5 gallons) and usually the best I can do is 5 gallons. I have to use fermcap-s because it's so close to the top. Think I might need to upgrade my kettle soon.


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

 

[PHDrunk]

You could dilute the wort using boiled water or spring water in the fermenter to up the volume. Or, if you start to build your own recipes, you can design them for 5 gallons.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[paperairplane]

So you end up with a little higher ABV - there are worse things in this world.

 

[Qhrumphf]

It's a problem that "batch size" means different things to different people. For some (like Northern Brewer apparently) it's the final volume of beer. For some, it's post boil volume and then disregarding loss later. As far as I'm concerned, the latter is better, because loss is different for everyone system and it's a much more consistent standard. But not everyone thinks of it like that, and recipes rarely specify. As far as I'm concerned, this as much and probably more of a reason for AG kit brewers missing their gravities than efficiency.