Missed my OG bad

[teutonic terror]

Mornin Borg...

Brewed a five gallon batch of smoked porter yesterday, and it wasn't
the best recipe I've ever done...
I missed the OG by 17 points and I really can't figure out why.
I've gotten very meticulous about volumes and weights in my last few brews
even going as far as weighing the water to get accurate volume. I checked the
volume levels in my kettle as well as my buckets.
I did everything correct as far as the recipe in Beersmith, but it still came out
4 points low post mash and 17 after the boil. The grain grind was a little finer than usual too
because of using a higher RPM drill for the mill...My mash temp started out at 157F.
One thing I did do differently, instead of a two step sparge I combined my sparge water
into one step and drained the mash tun after about five minutes.


This is the third time doing this recipe I've laid an egg as far as efficiency goes...
I'm perplexed..
Please look over the recipe and see if there is something I'm just not seeing
that would prevent me from hitting the numbers.
Thanks Borg...


BeerSmith 2 Recipe Printout - http://www.beersmith.com
Recipe: Welcome Back Porter 1.1 5.25 Gal
Brewer: JohnEC
Asst Brewer:
Style: Other Smoked Beer
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (30.0) 3 weeks later after two blowouts, very tasty! Roasty and smokey!

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Boil Size: 7.50 gal
Post Boil Volume: 4.50 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.25 gal
Bottling Volume: 5.25 gal
Estimated OG: 1.085 SG
Estimated Color: 43.1 SRM
Estimated IBU: 27.0 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 72.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 72.0 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
7.50 gal Lynchburg Va Water 1 -
1.00 tbsp PH 5.2 Stabilizer (Mash 60.0 mins) Water Agent 2 -
9 lbs 8.0 oz Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 3 55.1 %
2 lbs Biscuit Malt (23.0 SRM) Grain 4 11.6 %
1 lbs 8.0 oz Smoked Malt (9.0 SRM) Grain 5 8.7 %
1 lbs Carafa II (412.0 SRM) Grain 6 5.8 %
1 lbs Munich Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain 7 5.8 %
1 lbs Victory Malt (25.0 SRM) Grain 8 5.8 %
8.0 oz Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain 9 2.9 %
4.0 oz Aromatic Malt (26.0 SRM) Grain 10 1.4 %
1.00 oz East Kent Goldings (EKG) [4.70 %] - Firs Hop 11 16.5 IBUs
1.00 oz East Kent Goldings (EKG) [4.70 %] - Boil Hop 12 10.5 IBUs
8.0 oz Maltodextrin [Boil for 10 min](3.0 SRM) Sugar 13 2.9 %
1.00 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 5.0 mins) Fining 14 -
2.0 pkg SafAle English Ale (DCL/Fermentis #S-04) Yeast 15 -


Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Full Body, Batch Sparge
Total Grain Weight: 17 lbs 4.0 oz
----------------------------
Name Description Step Temperat Step Time
Mash In Add 20.94 qt of water at 173.0 F 156.0 F 60 min

Sparge: Batch sparge with 2 steps (0.53gal, 3.75gal) of 180.0 F water
Notes:
------

10-15-18- Started measuring all ingredients very carefully....
working on getting my volumes and efficency closer to where they should be.
finer grind on the grain also due to having to use my cheap drill.

Created with BeerSmith 2 - http://www.beersmith.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Beer-lord]

What brand of malt did you use? I know it's unlikely but I have read where occasionally, a crop of grain was a problem to a number of craft breweries.
Maybe you sparged to quickly????? Grain to fine??????
http://brulosophy.com/2015/09/10/6-tips ... -problems/

This almost never happens to me but I do BIAB and I do keep some DME around just in case.

[BlackDuck]

Do you always have your Brewhouse Efficiency set to 72%. Brewhouse efficiency and mash efficiency are two very different numbers. I use BeerSmith also, I have my brewhouse efficiency set to 68%, and my mash efficiencies are usually in the 73 to 75% range depending on the recipe. The fact that both brewhouse and mash efficiencies are the same number is weird to me, my recipes never have the same number for those.

And it could be a combination of a few factors, that's what makes figuring this out a pain in the rear.

EDIT...and another thing I noticed. Beersmith says your total grain weight is 17 lbs, 4 oz, but when I add it up manually, I only get 16 lbs, 12 oz. That's weird too.

[teutonic terror]

I use Great Western 2 row almost exclusively... and I did see that myself about the weight
and just assumed it was correct.
In fact I even went back thru my grain stash to see if I had missed adding anything.

I'll go back and see if I can edit the recipe to match the actual grain weight but on the
Volumes tab the grain weight is correct...
As far as the efficiency's go, they are defaults in the program I guess because I've never adjusted them
for lack of knowledge of where to set them and what and what it would mean to my recipes.
I usually let my sparge soak for about 10 minutes but I was running a little behind
so I pushed it a little...

The weird thing about this is I brewed a pale ale Sunday and all the numbers were spot on.

[BlackDuck]

You can set your brewhouse efficiency. It's found on the front page, which is the design tab, at the top. Right under Type and Batch size. The mash efficiency will automatically be figured out for you. This might be the culprit. Beersmith thinks your getting a better efficiency than you really are, so it returns a higher OG.

I had this problem a few years ago. I changed my brewhouse efficiency and started hitting my numbers. All you need to do is change the brewhouse number until your beersmith OG matches your actual OG. Then brew the recipe again using the new number. It might take a few brews to tweak, but once you get your numbers to come close, you've got it, and tehn you can leave your brewhouse efficiency alone.

That is odd about the pale ale. Check the brewhouse efficiency on that recipe.

[teutonic terror]

It was set to 72% also...in fact I came in at 71.9% BH and 83.8% Mash Eff. on that recipe...
I'm setting 68% as the default right now and see where that gets me, it cut my loss to 13 points...

I did a new recipe, exact duplicate of the porter recipe and on the design page it added the extra half
pound of grain again, but not on the mash or volumes tab...
software glitch?
I've got a previous incarnation of that recipe and all the volumes are correct on it.

Could the extra half pound of grain it sees be a culprit too or does a half pound of grain have that
many gravity points?

[teutonic terror]

It's calling the 1/2 lb Maltodextrin grain...it also drops the gravity three points.

Now just gotta pinpoint why this recipe is giving me so much trouble..even with lowered efficiency!

I've got the ingredients to do another batch in a couple of months...so I can repeat the process and take better
notes this time...

Thanks Duck and Beer-lord!

[Beer-lord]

Just thinking out loud but if your PH is way off, it can and will cause efficiency problems. I don't know if it can cause the difference your seeing but that with 1 or 2 of the other things mentioned could.

[teutonic terror]

Beer-lord I even considered that but the only thing I have to check PH is a roll of
what you would call laboratory test strips... they can get you in the ballpark
but all of the colors are so close together at such fine increments, with my old eyes,
I can barely tell one from another...
I'm using 5.2 Stabilizer, but I do understand it is not a panacea to bad PH.
In fact, aren't recipes with alot of dark grains usually pretty acidic anyway?

Btw, thanks for the link, saved it to read when my dog gets me up at 2 a.m. tomorrow!

[Beer-lord]

Yes, dark malts will lower PH so I wonder if adding 5.2 when using dark malts is ideal however, I don't think that would be very noticeable. I was just wondering if a group of things together may have caused this.
Only way to know if to brew again, even if it's at 2 a.m.

[teutonic terror]

The link was very interesting and the dog let me sleep until 4!

I have most of the ingredients to redo the recipe after this batch is gone, which won't take
too long because it's one of SWMBO's favorites!

[mashani]

FWIW, At least with my BIAB style beers, if I don't get mash PH into the proper range right away, it's 10% less mash efficiency guaranteed.

[Crazy Climber]

Since you were only off by 4 points after the mash, and much more after the boil (17 points), I would suspect one of two things as the primary culprit:

1) Boil-off rate. How was your volume into the fermenter? Did you get the amount of wort that you expected? I sometimes have issues hitting my target volume in BeerSmith, because boil-off rate can vary (IMO, greatly) based on ambient temp and the vigor of my boil. That's been one of my primary frustrations with brewing lately -- thinking I'm going to be x gallons of y gravity wort, and winding up with (x - 0.5) gallons of higher-gravity wort, or (x + 0.5) gallons of lower-gravity wort.

2) As BlackDuck already pointed out, the brewhouse efficiency may not be accurate. Since you said you're using the default, that's quite likely where those 13 extra gravity points disappeared to. Brewhouse efficiency should be set based on results that you've gotten on previous batches. If you have BeerSmith 3, open previous batches and go to the "Session" tab, and in the first section of the second row is the Brewhouse Efficiency numbers. The second number is Measured Efficiency - that tells you what you actually got for efficiency on that batch. (I upgraded from BeerSmith 2, and I apologize that I don't remember where the Measured Efficiency lives in BS2 -- I think the Session tab is new and only in BS3, but I know Measured Efficiency is somewhere in BS2...maybe the Volumes tab?). If you look at several previous batches, you should start to get an idea of how you should be setting your "BH Efficiency" on the Design tab in future recipes. Likely, it will be below the 72% default, and then your estimated gravities will more closely match what you actually get.

[teutonic terror]

FWIW, At least with my BIAB style beers, if I don't get mash PH into the proper range right away, it's 10% less mash efficiency guaranteed.

Next brew, which may be today, I'm gonna break out the test strips and see if I can get something close...

Since you were only off by 4 points after the mash, and much more after the boil (17 points), I would suspect one of two things as the primary culprit:

1) Boil-off rate. How was your volume into the fermenter? Did you get the amount of wort that you expected? I sometimes have issues hitting my target volume in BeerSmith, because boil-off rate can vary (IMO, greatly) based on ambient temp and the vigor of my boil. That's been one of my primary frustrations with brewing lately -- thinking I'm going to be x gallons of y gravity wort, and winding up with (x - 0.5) gallons of higher-gravity wort, or (x + 0.5) gallons of lower-gravity wort.

I've had the same problem myself, that's why I've become very careful about measuring my volumes as accurately as I possibly can...
I checked the volume marks on my bucket and they are accurate and consistent. I even made a measurement up to 5.25 gallons and marked
the bucket...hit the mark perfectly. I believe my problems in the past were caused by inconsistent measurements, I've found now that my pre boil
volumes were over by half a gallon and my fermentor amounts were over by a quart to a half gallon at times, and some of my really early AG
brews were off wildly in consistency from brew to brew...
This is the first brew that I've incorporated all the changes together and I'm hoping this was an anomaly, because most of the time my BH efficiency
is on average around 66% but this ended up at 57%.
BeerSmith 2 has the Sessions tab also, it's quite a bit of useful information...
So, I've reset my efficiency to 67%, gonna check the gap on the mill again and sparge slower this time around!

[Crazy Climber]

Sounds like you've got a good handle on next steps, and have already done a lot to shore up the measurements. I'm confident you'll be notably closer the next time you brew!