Missing points

[LlewellynBrewHaus]

So brewday was fairly successful. Deccoction mashing was awesome. Glycol chiller is kicking butt! The one thing that has me scratching my head is I missed my Starting gravity by 10 pts expected was 1.057 got 1.047. Preboil Gravity was 28 qts @ 1.034 after temp adj put it & 1.048 right on the money . Boiled an hour, lost 4 qts as expected 2qts of break left in kettle post boil gravity 1.047! I'm confused

 

[Nosybear]

Me, too. Not so much by the final results but by the 10 point miss. I usually get around 82% conversion with decoction mashes, applying the math to your results would indicate you started with around 11 pounds of grain (Just over 11 pounds, 2 ounces). Wasn't this an Oktoberfest? If that's the case, your gravity isn't really too low for the style. But if you wanted to bring it back up to 1.057, add about one and a half pounds of DME to the end of the boil. You missed target by about 60 GP (10 points times 6 gallons of wort). A pound of wort yields 42 ppg. Dividing the 60 you need by the 42 a pound of DME yields gives 1.43 pounds of DME.

I've seen the recipe but can't remember how many pounds of grain you started with. I'd start looking there - maybe there wasn't enough either due to a recipe miscalculation or a measurement error. Next stop would be the temperature in the mash tun during the decoctions. If it got too cool, maybe the enzymes slowed or stopped working. After that, you're getting into uncommon problems like old grain or high mash pH.

I'm guessing it's after the brew day, ferment it and see what you get! It will likely be a very quaffable Oktoberfest.

 

[newmanwell]

I've been so busy judging in BJCP comps that when I read the subject I thought you were referring to BJCP judging points.

 

[LlewellynBrewHaus]

Ya NB I'll be fine for style ..had 10.75# of grain to starts
92.5% conversion and 85% eff. I met or exceeded al my numbers on the brew sheet My confusion is how the preboil gravity and post boil gravity ended at the same number even after losing my expected 4 qt during 60min boil; expected to gain those 10 gravity point but they were a no show weird

 

[TheZel66]

what do use to measure? hydrometer or refractometer? I had that issue sometimes with my pre-boil gravity measurements using a hydrometer. If you're doing decoctions, then you're probably a veteran brewer, but are you sure you stirred up the wort before getting a sample? You can pull a sample from a higher gravity portion of the wort if its not mixed appropriately. My guess is that you over hit your pre-boil gravity measurement.

 

[LlewellynBrewHaus]

what do use to measure? hydrometer or refractometer? I had that issue sometimes with my pre-boil gravity measurements using a hydrometer. If you're doing decoctions, then you're probably a veteran brewer, but are you sure you stirred up the wort before getting a sample? You can pull a sample from a higher gravity portion of the wort if its not mixed appropriately. My guess is that you over hit your pre-boil gravity measurement.

I agree, After pouring over my process and my notes that was the only conclusion that made sense. No matter -at the end of the day still made a good looking marzen that will be in the 5's instead of 6 abv that works too

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

unless you entering into a competition or building a stable recipe and tweaking it as your going along and taking notes, it really doesn't matter, "in my opinion" most beer will taste good to the brewer no matter what and those exact measurements are meaningless to the taste buds, its all about having fun and enjoying your self