All-Grain Brew Kettle Gravity

[td1368]

So I finally did my first all grain batch, a brown ale, over the weekend and I've gotta question about efficiency and specific gravity after I've mashed out.

After I was done mashing out I checked my specific gravity to calculate efficiency and saw it was low 1.034 which gave me a lousy efficiancy somewhere around 18. So I added a pound of LME during the boil to boost up the SG.

About 45 min in on the boil I realized I forgot to make a temperature correnction on my wort. So I recalculated SG after the boil with the temperature correction and ended up at 1.061!!

Needless to say this will put my alcohol content somewhere arond 6.5 - 8.0. Way to high for a brown ale.

So I have a questions. Should I just call this a Strong Scotch Ale or as my wife suggested add water after fermentaion to lower the SG? Do I have to wait until my next batch to see how well I did with the mash extraction or can I reverse engineer my SG and try to figure out my SQ without the extract?

Any help would be appreciated.

[BrewDog]

You can reverse engineer it if you know exactly how many lbs of LME you added.

LME gives 36 pts per lb per gallon, so if you add 1 lb to a gallon of water, you get a 1.036 wort.

dividing that up by 5 gallons:
1 lb in 5 gallons will give you 36/5 = 7.2 => raises your OG by 1.0072


1.061 - .0072 = 1.0538 => round to 1.054

So, if you got 1.061 post boil, but added 1 lb of LME, you actually had an OG from your mash of about 1.054.

HTH-

[BrewDog]

Oh, and I'd call it an Old Ale.

[td1368]

Thanks,

When I bought my grain the homebrew dude said I should fiqure 65% efficiency from my grain the first couple of all grain batches.

So I had 12# of grain and collected 6.5 gallons of wort so using 1.054 I come up with a efficiency of 29.

Maybe I'll fiqure on 75% efficiency on the next batch.

Old Ale good, watererd down beer bad!

[modenacart]

You should keep in mind that when you take a pre-boil gravity your beer is still diluted. You need to correct for predicted post boil volume. I have an excel file that will do the calculation for you. It won't let me attach it but if you email me, I will send it to you.

jpope7@cinci.rr.com