Why is my Og so low yo?

[melikidabeer]

Just brewed an extract beer. 6.6lb of light LME, 2lb of Amber DME, assorted hops etc. My calculations say I should have an OG of 1.056ish, but I'm ending up with 1.035. What's up with that? It was a 3gallon boil, topped off to 5 gallons. I measure the temp at 20 centigrade which is what my hydrometer is calibrated too. And yes, I checked the hydrometer in pure water and it read 1. Any ideas? Cheers.

 

[IL1kebeer]

Just brewed an extract beer. 6.6lb of light LME, 2lb of Amber DME, assorted hops etc. My calculations say I should have an OG of 1.056ish, but I'm ending up with 1.035. What's up with that? It was a 3gallon boil, topped off to 5 gallons. I measure the temp at 20 centigrade which is what my hydrometer is calibrated too. And yes, I checked the hydrometer in pure water and it read 1. Any ideas? Cheers.

Top your wort and top off water probably weren't mixed correctly. If you followed directions and used the exact amount of water and extract then you will most definitely be at your target OG

Edit- My calculations show that your OG should be around 1.062

 

[melikidabeer]

It was very well mixed and aired before taking a sample so I don't think it could be that. Any other ideas?

 

[Yuri_Rage]

Barring volume errors, it wasn't mixed well enough. Happens all the time, despite your insistence to the contrary.

 

[Banno]

Yes, I can vouch for the wort not being mixed properly...whoops!!

 

[melikidabeer]

Problem solved. An extra 500grams of sugar was added to the fermenter. I make that 2lb of DME, 6.6lb of LME and 1lb of sugar. I think that should make it an og of 1.074. Is that about right?

 

[Yuri_Rage]

Problem compounded.

The math doesn't lie. Unless you measured water volume or extract weight incorrectly, the original, unadulterated recipe had all of the ingredients required to achieve wort with an OG of 1.062.

The sample you measured was very likely not representative of the entire batch. However, the yeast would've roused any settled fermentables into a homogeneous solution and then fermented them appropriately. All you've done is made their work more difficult and likely imbalanced your beer. Yo.

 

[melikidabeer]

I'm sure you're right. Problem identified was a more appropriate statement. So is the beer ****ed?

 

[CCericola]

I'm sure you're right. Problem identified was a more appropriate statement. So is the beer ****ed?

Probably not - it might be a little unbalanced. Dryer than you'd want or expect. Worst case, you stressed those lovable scamps and they may produce some off flavours.

Don't get me wrong you can screw up a beer, but with good sanitation it's pretty difficult to.

 

[marvaden]

Not really helpful for why you didn't hit your numbers, but here is a link to a helpful tool. I use several of their calculators when coming up with recipes.

http://www.brewersfriend.com/extract-ogfg/