Higher than expected OG

I hope that someone might be able to shed some light on why I got a much higher OG than I was expecting on the smoke beer that I just brewed. See recipe below. Beersmith said I should get around 1.063. So far, my experience with Beersmith is that it is pretty much on the money when estimating OG. I’m usually within .001 or .002 of what it says I should get. This time instead of 1.063, I got 1.071. I took the reading 3 separate times just to be sure. I’m not complaining about the extra alcohol, I just want to try to figure out why it was so off. Any suggestions as to where to look would be helpful.

It an extract with specialty grains recipe. I topped off to 5 gal and followed the recipe exactly.

1.00 tsp Gypsum
1 lbs Smoked Malt
8.0 oz Black (Patent) Malt
8.0 oz Chocolate Malt
2 lbs Amber Dry Extract
6 lbs Amber Liquid Extract Extract
1.00 oz Brewer’s Gold 60.0 min Hop
1.00 oz Fuggles 15.0 min Hop
1.0 pkg English Ale (White Labs #WLP002) Yeast

Thanks

David

Might not of been mixed enough.

a couple things could be the culprit.

-your ‘top off water’ and your wort were not mixed enough (not a problem. Mixing well enough is actually very hard to do. This is the most common reason people have miss-read OG readings)

  • or you ended with less than 5 gallons. creating a more concentrated wort than anticipated

With extract, If you use it all, and hit the desired volume. your OG is guaranteed to be what the recipe predicts (assuming your math is accurate). Extract has a set amount of sugar. This is why there is no “efficiency” with extract batches.

It’s possible that the ‘ppg’ that is in Beersmith is off from the actual amount of the DME/LME. You would have to measure out an exact amount of water/extract and have a precise hydrometer or refractometer to tell.

And I would guess that there could be a small variation between runs of DME/LME as to the sugar content.

[quote=“Nighthawk”]It’s possible that the ‘ppg’ that is in Beersmith is off from the actual amount of the DME/LME. You would have to measure out an exact amount of water/extract and have a precise hydrometer or refractometer to tell.

And I would guess that there could be a small variation between runs of DME/LME as to the sugar content.[/quote]

I suppose anything is possible… but i doubt the small variation would account for an 8 point jump in gravity. these threads arise all the time with extract brewers, and i’d say 99% of the time, the culprit is volume or mixing

[quote=“S.Scoggin”][quote=“Nighthawk”]It’s possible that the ‘ppg’ that is in Beersmith is off from the actual amount of the DME/LME. You would have to measure out an exact amount of water/extract and have a precise hydrometer or refractometer to tell.

And I would guess that there could be a small variation between runs of DME/LME as to the sugar content.[/quote]

I suppose anything is possible… but i doubt the small variation would account for an 8 point jump in gravity. these threads arise all the time with extract brewers, and i’d say 99% of the time, the culprit is volume or mixing[/quote]

It was the remotest of possibilities.

I agree with volume/mixing being the majority of the issue.

I had similar problems my first few batches. I started using a mix stir to aerate and realized a side benifit of using the mix stir is that it mixes the wort and top off water together really well. I haven’t had any wacky hydrometer readings since