Brewing Network recipe help please!

[arborman]

I am planning on doing a second take of a Moose Drool clone tomorrow. The first one I did was an extract from Northern, and my first Home Brew in 20 years. It turned out pretty terrible! This is going to be a revenge batch, in all grain, and based off the Jamil Show, "can you brew it".

I am using beersmith to enter the recipe in exactly as they gave out on the show (which they determined cloned), but I am coming up off on my end numbers a bit. Specifically, I am ending high on my FG and low on my ABV.

Recipe as given is as follows:

6 gal batch
10.8 lbs 2 row
5.5 oz choc malt
1.25 lbs crystal 75/80
1/2 oz black patent
40 grams East Kent Goldings 60 min. 4.75aa
17 grams willamette 10 min
17 grams liberty 0 min
WL002 English Ale yeast (made a 1 liter starter with freshly harvested yeast)
154 mash
IBU's around 30
OG 1.052

I should be hitting 5.2 ABV and a FG of 1.012, but beersmith is putting me at 4.6 ABV with a FG of 1.017.

Not sure what I should do here, if anything....

Options I have thought about would be:

Up my grain bill to a higher OG?
Lower my Mash?

If I use a different yeast (WL001) I could get higher attenuation and hit my numbers perfectly.... but, I don't want to sacrifice the flavor of the beer I am trying to hit.

If I remove my yeast from the recipe, my recipe estimates are nearly perfect: Hitting 5.2 ABV with a FG of 1.013.

What do you guys think I should do here? I want to nail this brew!

 

[GASoline71]

If you're going all grain... and your efficiency is a little lower than expected, you can add another pound of 2 row to make up for it. You'll get a little more snot out of the wort and could get the OG to hit more where you want it.

Edit: you'll have to adjust your mash water volume as well.

Gary

 

[arborman]

If you're going all grain... and your efficiency is a little lower than expected, you can add another pound of 2 row to make up for it. You'll get a little more snot out of the wort and could get the OG to hit more where you want it.

Edit: you'll have to adjust your mash water volume as well.

Gary

Thanks for the feedback. Well, I'm really not trying to raise my OG, I'm just trying to figure how I can get the yeast to attenuate to the FG I'm trying to hit. I'm afraid if I raise the OG, my FG will be even higher, resulting in too sweet of a beer. I thought about mashing lower, but won't that dry the beer out too much? I'd have to go to like 148, down from 154, to hit my FG. Only other option I can think of is to use a different yeast, but I'm afraid that will alter the character of this beer too much. Arghh!

 

[Yooper]

Thanks for the feedback. Well, I'm really not trying to raise my OG, I'm just trying to figure how I can get the yeast to attenuate to the FG I'm trying to hit. I'm afraid if I raise the OG, my FG will be even higher, resulting in too sweet of a beer. I thought about mashing lower, but won't that dry the beer out too much? I'd have to go to like 148, down from 154, to hit my FG. Only other option I can think of is to use a different yeast, but I'm afraid that will alter the character of this beer too much. Arghh!

Beersmith is useless at predicting FG, so just ignore that.

If I mashed that grainbill in my system at 152, I'd end up with 1.010-1.012 or so.

 

[arborman]

Beersmith is useless at predicting FG, so just ignore that.

If I mashed that grainbill in my system at 152, I'd end up with 1.010-1.012 or so.

Good to know, thanks Yooper. Well, I'll stick to the original design and see how I do. This will actually be a 9 gallon brew, first time on my brand new top tier system. Looking forward to this one