Hey,
I did a biere de table today and was aiming for a 1.043 OG, but hit 1.040. Anyone got any tips as to how to hit it better next time?
Was the grain crushed in the store or at home?
Store crush: run in through a 2nd time.
Home crush: tighten the gap a little more.
Do you take pH readings of the mash?
You can put gravity ahead of volume and boil it longer. You’ll give up less then a quart but hit your mark.
You might also let the mash rest longer next time. Also I find a mashout bumps me up a few points but those are not usually very fermentable so they also show up in a slightly higher FG.
Being low by 3ppg for a 5gal batch means you missed 15pts, thats about a third of a pound of sugar. Not bad really. You can always add 150g of sugar.
The “error” is so small, it could just be from error in volume measurements or hydrometer readings.
first, thanks for all the awesome responses. this is why i love this forum. 
secondly, the runnings were a bit thin, and although i did two full batch sparges, i’m not especially happy that i got the best grind there. (it was store ground).
i didn’t do pH readings; i’ve been working on the assumption that NY water is pretty decent and doesn’t require compensation.
@tom: thanks for that info; i was wondering how to translate the ppg to real world.
and i’m glad it’s not too far off; i pitched a really active starter so i’m pretty sure i’ll hit the FG target - the tip about a longer boil is really useful though.
Thanks everyone!
What was your efficiency assumption? Kind of hard to tell if you need to improve or not without it.
Good point. If the recipe is designed around 80% efficiency and you hit 75%, I don’t see where any tweaking needs to be done.
This
good question. The recipe suggested 70%.
[quote=“Nighthawk”]Was the grain crushed in the store or at home?
Store crush: run in through a 2nd time.
Home crush: tighten the gap a little more.[/quote]
I did a bitter recently that I double milled the grains and got 1.042 instead of the 1.037 I got last time I brewed this recipe with a single mill of the grain. A couple of batches ago I got 1.061 instead of 1.052. I need to find my instructions and tighten the gap.
