I “attempted” to brew a Scottish Ale. The OG was 1.022. Clearly this should not be the case; I am beginning to theorize that I did not crush the grain well enough. Could this be the case? If not, what are any other suggestions as to what the culprit could be (I did not have too much water).
Yes. that would be the case.
:cheers:
I’ve heard of a number of new AG brewers who did not crush the grains enough (and one who did not crush the grains at all!) but at least you know the issue. When I was a new AG brewer, I had the LHBS or online supplier crush the grains for me so it was one less thing to worry about on that tricky brewday. Maybe you could tell us what your routine was for crushing the grains and we could go from there.
As I am new to brewing all together, I do not have much of the great equipment that I’ve been hearing about; in this case, a grain crusher. I read that using a coffee grinder could work. I was grinding for about 1 second, about 4 times. I am intending on purchasing crushed grain until I come into ownership of a grain crusher. I will reference how the crushed grain that I order looks compared to the grain that I crushed. Hopefully that will help clear up just how crushed the grain needs to be.
Thanks for helping out, folks!
I appreciate it.
You put 10lb of grain through a coffee grinder? Or was this steeping grains? If the latter, steeping grains don’t add that much additional sugars. Did you measure OG at 70F? If its warm it will read much lower. What was the OG supposed to be? A Scottish 60/- is going to be a light beer.
A good crush has 1/16" pieces and a fair amount of flour. It can be more coarse if its steeping grains.
Did you do extract or all-grain? If this was extract and the grains you had are the “specialty grains”, they are for flavor, the extract provides nearly all of the gravity and it is very hard to miss the target O.G… Are you doing partial boils (less than 5 gallons, topped off with water?)
What typically happens is that once you top with water the carboy is pretty full and hard to get well mixed, so when you take your gravity reading you’re sampling from the top-off water. If all of this is true then don’t worry. The yeast will mix it up well once fermentation kicks off.
I’m an extract brewer and I stopped trying to measure O.G. as the readings were all over the place, and there is not anything actionable no matter what the reading (other than to worry.)
