I created my own Pale Ale recipe using beer-calculus and missed my estimated O.G. of 1.051 by .020! I ended up with 1.071! I can’t figure out what happened. I ended up adding another gallon post boil to bring it to 1.058. I do full boils starting with 6 gallons and boiling down to 5. Here is the recipe. http://hopville.com/recipe/1244909/amer … k-pale-ale
I steeped my grains for 30 minutes @155 in 3 gallons and removed, rinsed then brought up to 6 gallons, added the first malt addition(3lbs 6oz) @155 and added FWH(.25oz Casacde) than brought up to boil, added 60 min addition(.75oz Csacade) got a good hot break, and went from there with 15(.5oz Willamette) 10(.5oz Willamette) 5(.5oz Willamette) 1(1oz Willamatte).
I got caught up in conversation and forgot to add the late malt addition(3lbs 8oz) @15 and ended up adding it @5 but held off chilling for a few minutes to sanitize/pasturize.
Not only was my O.G. higher than estimated but I’ve also got alot of sediment in the bottom of my carboy. I strained the hops out so I have no idea whats at the bottom. Its about an inch+ deep! I’m also worried the added gallon of water is gonna change my IBU which should be 42.3(according to beer-calculus).
I have a barleywine(http://hopville.com/recipe/1195400/amer … barleywine) I’m brewing next weekend that I formulated using beer-calculus and want to figure out what happened so I don’t make the same screw up. HELP!
I steeped my grains for 30 minutes @155 in 3 gallons and removed, rinsed then brought up to 6 gallons
[/quote]
Just to clarify, it was the 12oz of of Briess Caramel you steeped in 3 gallons of water? That seems like a lot of steeping water for such a small amount of grain, but no reason it would change the gravity - I just want to confirm that it was only 12oz.
Break material in your sample won’t affect the reading. Something’s wacky with that recipe calculator. You should have been in the 1.060 range with that recipe. The calculator lists DME at 34 ppg and it’s closer to 45. 34 would be for LME. Whatever the other reasons, the calculator you used was seriously wrong. And as has been said above, you used way too much water for steeping. Try to keep it around 2 qt. of water per lb. of grain.
Thanks for clarifying that on the break material, Denny. Being this new to the game I didn’t know if that could cause a measurement issue or not.
Looking at that recipe link today, the gravity is up to 1057 with more 46 ppg from the dme. So perhaps that was a momentary glitch, when i looked at it yesterday it did show 34 or 35 for ppg.
Looking at your barleywine recipe, the extract contribution figures look to be normal (40’s for dme and 30’s for lme).
Thanks for the replys! I went through and changed the ppg values for the recipes(didn’t even think of that). And I’ll be using less water for steeping, too, not sure where I got the idea to use so much. Thanks everyone! Next batch should be a huge improvement! I’m just working on getting some of my own recipes put together and brewing them with consistency then maybe tweaking them if need be. The info ya’ll have provided is a great help!
