Another Brew Day w/ High OG

[jhart94949]

Well, for a second weekend in a row I ended up with a high OG, supposed to hit 1.064, I ended up with 1.074.

But I looked at my beersmith notes and I found two things in common. Both recipes were 90 minute Mash 90 minute boil, and both times I had a mash temp that was about 8-10 degrees to high. I keep reading that I will lose 20 degrees when I mix my grains in the Mash Tun but I am only losing 10 degrees....

Is this most likely the cause of my high OG readings?? Hopefully my Nelson Saison and today Belgian Blonde come out good, I am a little worried about todays....I am supposed to add 1 lb of sugar on day three in the fermenter but with the OG being so high already I might skip it....Thoughts??

 

[schematix]

Can you provide more detail? Batch size, mash temp after 10 minutes, mash temp after 90 minutes, etc.

What are you assuming your extract efficiency will be?

For the Belgians I think you need the sugar to help dry it out, but given that your OG is so high you might only try half.

Give more info and I'm sure someone can pin point your issue.

 

[MrHadack]

Some initial thoughts:

1. Strike water temp and heat loss: It depends on equipment, how long you take to do it, and how much you stir, but I'd say the temp loss is closer to 10 degrees than 20 when mashing in. You say you use Beersmith-- in the mash section of the software it should tell you the temperature of the strike water. Mine is usually around 10 degrees higher (for a 150F mash, the suggested strike water is 160.9F for my latest recipe.) Regardless, I just follow that number and it works like a charm, provided you have a nice accurate equipment profile set up in the software.

2. A higher mash temp will cause two particular things to happen: More non-fermentable sugars will be created (more body to the beer and less alcohol), and the mash will go much faster. So if you are mashing up around 159F instead of 149F for example, after 90 minutes you are going to have created a LOT of non-fermentable sugars, and potentially way more sugars than you might have if mashing for that long at a lower temp like 149F. However, I would think 90 minutes is plenty of time for ANY temp to get the job done.

3. Are your volumes accurate? That will affect things. Here's a practical example: Suppose a recipe predicted 1.064 OG at 5.5 gallons. If you finish the boil and you have only 4.75 gallons in the kettle due to evaporation, your OG could be 1.074. If you top-off with water to reach 5.5 gallons and took another reading, it would be 1.064. So I probably should ask you WHEN you are taking the readings, and if the volume of the wort you are measuring is correct.

4. Beersmith has fields for entering the length of time you plan to boil as well as how much water you lose to evaporation per hour. If these are not accurate, its prediction of the OG will not be accurate.

Let me know some of this info and we'll take it from there.