OG way lower than it should have been. why?

Brewed an IPA today. Grain bill was 13lb 2 row, 1.5lb C-40, 10oz C-60. I anticipated an OG of about 1.075. It wound up being 1.056! How could it have been so far off? Mashed in with 5.5 gallons and batch sparged with 5gal.

What were your water volumes and temperatures?

So you had a pre boil volume of 10.5gallons? With that grainbill 1.056 sounds about right.

Yeah, your volume sounds high. Even figuring grain absorption, that sounds high. Is this your first all grain? What volume did you end up with in the kettle?

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No. Been doing AG for a while. Wound up with 4.5 gals in the kettle and my mash rested at 152. When I put the grain bill in brewers friend, it showed closer to what I expected also. This was my first brew in a year or so. Guess I need to get my books back out and brush up on my math.

Brewers friend uses their brew house efficiency. If I had to guess your crush didn’t allow you to get the same numbers as the calculator because your efficiency is low than the calculator on brewers friend. Most time the main cause is poor crush quality. As Denny conn would say it’s all about the crush

Ya. Just out practice. I needed about 5 more lbs of grain to hit my mark. Dummy. Gonna be a 90 ibu pale ale I guess haha. Oh well.

I keep some DME around for just such situations.