Where did i go wrong and how do i fix it

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Glynn

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I made a double ipa today, everything was going good but my og is low by 12 points. I hit all my marks. did the 16.5 oz of hops take away that much liquid that i couldnt hit my og? If so how do i fix this

Type: All Grain Date: 10/12/2012
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.50 gal Brewer:
Boil Size: 8.00 gal Asst Brewer:
Boil Time: 60 min Equipment: Pot and Cooler (10 gal/12 gal) All Grain
End of Boil Volume 6.75 gal
Est Brewhouse Efficiency: 66.00 %
Measured brewhouse Efficiency 56.00%
Est Mash Efficiency 76.6 %
Measured Mash Efficiency 74.2
Est Pre boil 1.066
Measured Pre boil 1.064


1.00 tbsp Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) (Mash 60.0 mins) Water Agent 1 -
13 lbs Pale Malt (2-Row) Canadian Malting Co (2.0 SRM) Grain 2 73.2 %
1 lbs Munich (Cargill) (9.5 SRM) Grain 3 5.6 %
1 lbs Victory Malt (25.0 SRM) Grain 4 5.6 %
1 lbs Wheat malt - (Briess) (2.3 SRM) Grain 5 5.6 %
4.0 oz Honey Malt (25.0 SRM) Grain 6 1.4 %
1 lbs 8.0 oz Corn Sugar (Dextrose) (0.0 SRM) Sugar 7 8.5 %
0.50 oz Horizon [11.10 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 8 14.6 IBUs
1.00 oz Cascade pellet [6.70 %] - Boil 30.0 min Hop 9 13.5 IBUs
1.00 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins) Fining 10 -
3.00 oz Cascade pellet [6.70 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 11 26.2 IBUs
3.00 oz Citra pellet 3 [14.10 %] - Boil 10.0 min Hop 12 40.3 IBUs
3.00 oz Amarillo Leaf [9.50 %] - Boil 5.0 min Hop 13 13.6 IBUs
2.00 oz Amarillo Leaf [9.50 %] - Aroma Steep 15.0 min Hop 14 0.0 IBUs
2.00 oz Cascade pellet [6.20 %] - Aroma Steep 15.0 min Hop 15 0.0 IBUs
2.00 oz Citra pellet 3 [14.10 %] - Aroma Steep 15.0 min Hop 16 0.0 IBUs

Est Original Gravity: 1.084 SG Measured Original Gravity: 1.072 SG
 
Your preboil effeciency is on, so the only thing that would kill your post boil gravity is a wimpy boil.

edit: You say you had 1.25 gallons of boil-off. Something doesn't add up here.
 
my normal boil off is 1.25/hr and i barely got 5.50 gals into the fermenter. my normal pre boil batch size is 7.5 for all my recipes, but because this has over a lb of hops i brought it up to 8 gals to compensate for absorption.
 
It's a little difficult to determine what you actually did based on the info you provided, but I don't think you can blame the hops. You list a 5.5 gallon batch, starting with an 8 gallon boil, with end of boil at 6.75. My guess is that your estimated original gravity is based on 5.5 gallons, and your measured is in the 6.75 gallons post boil volume. That difference in volume alone may aco**** for the difference in measured OG. If you continued your boil to reduce the volume of your wort, your OG would have been higher. Is the 8 gallons right, and do you know how you ended up with 8 gallons to boil?
 
yep i got 4 gals from the mash and 4 from the sparge. the end of boil is what bs says i should have left over before trub and cooling loss which is set at 1 gal which would give me 5.75 to the fermenter. i could only squeeze out 5.5 and just barley.
 
Something is off in the measurements or volumes........
Your pre-boil gravity was 1.064 and your estimated OG is 1.084, there is no way you are going to get that with a 60 minute boil hitting the expected volumes. Pre to Post boil is usually about 10 points +/1 a couple, not 20 points..

I will say that 5oz of leaf hops in the boil are going to absorb a lot of wort but IMO that is not the difference in your gravity readings. Regardless of what the software says, something is amiss

When you put the recipe in BS, it will not account for additional loss with the use of leaf hops, you have to do that based on experience so you would have need to re-evaluate your losses and manually adjust them for that recipe.

Now that you have actual numbers for the process, go back and copy the recipe but adjust the volumes and see what the software comes up with, it may help you figure out what happened.

It's also possible your volume calibrations are off. If you are going with what is on the buckets they should be verified. I found on two of my buckets that the factory markings were off by .5 gallons:(
 
If you pre boil gravity was 1.064 @ 8 gallons, your should have gotten around 1.076 post boil @ 6.75 gallons.

There's something wrong with that 74% pre boil effeciency. Your Beersmith settings have to be off.
 
my guess is its is the end of boil vol vs "batch vol". when i place my mouse over batch size it says "the estimated batch size of the recipe, as measured into the fermenter." which i set at 5.50 because thats what i want in it. the end of boil is what is actually in my kettle before straining. should end of boil and batch size be the same. the same thing happened to a recipe i did yesterday. hit all the numbers but the og was low by 4 points
 
If you pre boil gravity was 1.064 @ 8 gallons, your should have gotten around 1.076 post boil @ 6.75 gallons.

There's something wrong with that 74% pre boil effeciency. Your Beersmith settings have to be off.

is it normal for bs to include the sugar as part of the pre boil because it is
after i did my mash i got a pre boil of 1.054 when i added the sugar it went up to 1.064 which matches bs if i take out the sugar in the recipe the estimated og matches my og before adding sugar
 
the only thing it can be is that batch size and end of boil size have to be the same and assume im going to loose 1 gal to trub and cooling this way i get an acctual 5.5 into my fermenter after draining, then everything is perfect
 
I leave the "lost to boil trub and chiller" at zero and adjust the batch size up to what I get post boil.

Some people dump everything into the fermenter, some don't. So the batch size number is vague.

If I want 5.5 to the fermenter, I use 6.5 for my batch size (or more in a hop heavy beer.)
 
thank you all for helping me out with this. now it all make sense. once i made all the changes my mash and brewhouse eff has improved greatly.
 
The brewhouse efficiency in Beersmith is not an indicator that I consider important. It wants to include all losses post boil. Actual brewhouse efficiency is based on what ends up in the bottle. What's important to me is the volume and quality of the wort in the pot after chilling. Anything lost after that will not effect my end product other than how much of it I get.

If you set your loss at 1 1/4 gallons and your batch size at 5 1/2 gallons Beersmith will give you a different IBU number than if you set the loss at zero and the batch size at 6 3/4 gallons. Makes no sense to me. Just because you left something in the pot, your wort has a different amount of bitterness?

In the end it's all about consistency. I find I get that by setting the loss to zero.


disclaimer:
I''m still using V1.4. I bought V2 but didn't like it.
Has V2 changed this?
 
The brewhouse efficiency in Beersmith is not an indicator that I consider important. It wants to include all losses post boil. Actual brewhouse efficiency is based on what ends up in the bottle. What's important to me is the volume and quality of the wort in the pot after chilling. Anything lost after that will not effect my end product other than how much of it I get.

If you set your loss at 1 1/4 gallons and your batch size at 5 1/2 gallons Beersmith will give you a different IBU number than if you set the loss at zero and the batch size at 6 3/4 gallons. Makes no sense to me. Just because you left something in the pot, your wort has a different amount of bitterness?

In the end it's all about consistency. I find I get that by setting the loss to zero.


disclaimer:
I''m still using V1.4. I bought V2 but didn't like it.
Has V2 changed this?

no
 
i went through all my measurement as suggested and here is what i got

8 gal pre boil @1.064
boil off 1 gal
1.5 gal lost to hops and trub
5.5 gal yeald @ 1.071
mash eff was 74%
brewhouse eff 55%

iv made this recipe 3 times and never hit the final mark
 
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