Hello all!
A couple of months ago, I brewed my first all grain recipe. It was an American IPA. Skipping a lot of the details, I was thrilled to see that the target OG and FG were completely on point (after several partial extract batches that never were). Also, the beer was fantastic!
Today I brewed my second all grain, an Irish Red. Both of these recipes came from the same book (which I can reference if anyone thinks the book/recipes might actually be important) and I ended up at 1.066 OG when the target was 1.054.
A couple of things to note. I did not use any top off water because my pre-boil volume was 7 gallons, boil was 60 minutes, guess I didn't think I needed to worry about ending up with less than 5 gallons. After using the formula from John Palmer's book to get the target strike temperature of 165 (our mash temp was 153), I fell short of my goal for the mash and had to add around 1.5 gallons of hotter water to hit 153. I did let the mash sit for 65 instead of 60 minutes. Lastly, I unfortunately forgot to check what the final volume sitting in the fermenter is. I assume it's around 5g, but assuming is bad.
All this being said, I'm hoping for likely culprits to why my OG might be so high, and how I can fix this in the future. Also, if there are any general rules of thumb to try to meet certain OG targets, I'd love to get some help there as well. Especially if it has to do with my mashing. Thanks so much for any and all input!
A couple of months ago, I brewed my first all grain recipe. It was an American IPA. Skipping a lot of the details, I was thrilled to see that the target OG and FG were completely on point (after several partial extract batches that never were). Also, the beer was fantastic!
Today I brewed my second all grain, an Irish Red. Both of these recipes came from the same book (which I can reference if anyone thinks the book/recipes might actually be important) and I ended up at 1.066 OG when the target was 1.054.
A couple of things to note. I did not use any top off water because my pre-boil volume was 7 gallons, boil was 60 minutes, guess I didn't think I needed to worry about ending up with less than 5 gallons. After using the formula from John Palmer's book to get the target strike temperature of 165 (our mash temp was 153), I fell short of my goal for the mash and had to add around 1.5 gallons of hotter water to hit 153. I did let the mash sit for 65 instead of 60 minutes. Lastly, I unfortunately forgot to check what the final volume sitting in the fermenter is. I assume it's around 5g, but assuming is bad.
All this being said, I'm hoping for likely culprits to why my OG might be so high, and how I can fix this in the future. Also, if there are any general rules of thumb to try to meet certain OG targets, I'd love to get some help there as well. Especially if it has to do with my mashing. Thanks so much for any and all input!
