Exceeding OG

[lmarkis]

Hi Everyone,

New to all-grain brewing and to the forum, so hello.

This past weekend I brewed the Northern Brewer All-grain Irish Draught Ale. The only change I made to the recipe is that instead of adding the honey in for a 60min boil I added it in the last 10min to retain some of the honey rather than boiling it all off. Next time I will add it during fermentation. However, my question is as follows:

The OG for this brew should have been around 1.045 based on the instructions (mind you this is the OG including the honey). However, when I finished collecting the wort I found my pre-boil gravity was at 1.042. After adding the honey in the boil and testing my OG before adding the yeast I found the OG to be 1.052.

My question is that if my OG is above what it should be, based on the instructions, did I do something wrong? or is that maybe my equipment/process has a higher efficiency?

Thanks for your feedback, looking forward to speaking to everyone in the future.

 

[Conan]

A higher OG than expected could be indicative of a couple things. First, your volumes may be different than the kit was intended for- you may have only collected 4.8 gallons instead of 5, for example. I'm not certain as to the 'breakdown' properties of honey, but perhaps adding it later retained a higher-gravity version of the sugars present. Kind of like hops and their acids- early additions 'morph' more than later additions, and the resultant IBU from each addition is different. I don't know if this works with honey and sugar in general, though.

I'm more inclined to think the difference is in your equipment vs. theirs. Kits are generally designed for the average outcome- some people may have higher of lower gravities, but the majority will be reasonably close to the published values. There's nothing really wrong with higher gravities than intended, it just means (if it's repeatable and consistent) that you get to use less grain when assembling recipes rather than purchasing kits. Kyle