This one is a head scratcher

[Gymrat]

Today I did my 90 Shilling Ale in traditional fashion. Pulling a gallon of the first runnings and boiling them down for 45 minutes. From there I tossed in my hops and took the rest of my first runnings. I then batch sparged and collected enough wort that I ended up with a little over 5 gallons of wort. Now here is what I am wondering about. I only used 9 pounds of Marris Otter. That was my entire grain bill. Yet I ended up with an OG of 1.058. Why? I know I concentrated that wort, but I then replaced all the water I boiled out of it. How does that work?

[russki]

Dang, that's pretty great efficiency! The only thought I have is that you sparged with more water than normal to make up the ~3/4 gallon you boiled off from first runnings, which extracted more sugars from the mash...

[mashani]

Perhaps you got better then your normal mash/sparge efficiency... When you say first runnings, did you pull all of it, or did you leave the rest in the MLT while you did the 45 minute boil. If the later, I bet you got more conversion while you waited.

Concentrating the wort should not change your OG once it's brought back up to volume, although it may change the fermentibility of the wort.

[Gymrat]

Dang, that's pretty great efficiency! The only thought I have is that you sparged with more water than normal to make up the ~3/4 gallon you boiled off from first runnings, which extracted more sugars from the mash...

I did sparge with a lot more water to make up the difference. Also I left the remainder of the first runnings in the mash for an extra 45 minutes while I was boiling the 1 gallon down. I mashed at 151 degrees for an hour before I did that.

[Gymrat]

Perhaps you got better then your normal mash/sparge efficiency... When you say first runnings, did you pull all of it, or did you leave the rest in the MLT while you did the 45 minute boil. If the later, I bet you got more conversion while you waited.

Concentrating the wort should not change your OG once it's brought back up to volume, although it may change the fermentibility of the wort.

Yes I left the remaining first runnings in the mash while I did the 45 minute boil on the gallon I extracted.