Just did my first brew yesterday and it went pretty well. Only burnt myself once and only had a few minor kitchen mishaps. Transferred my wort to the fermenter and topped it off back to 5 gallons. I then took my hydrometer reading and the OG was 1.040. The only problem with that is the estimate for the recipe was 1.050. I can already hear some of you saying "well it's still beer" but wondering how I was so far off. The best I can think of is that I filled the pre-boil volume in my kettle to the 3.5 gallons but I did it a quart at a time. That basically meant I poured in 14 quarts. Naturally though I lost count and just made an assumption of where I was. So my volume may have been off a quart or even as much as half a gallon. This is my assumption of what went wrong but could a quart make for such a big difference in the OG?