Hydrometer/ABV question

[MartyWayne]

Hey guys,

Last night we bottled our belgian strong dark ale and we noticed something strange.... our ABV was 10.76% as opposed to the 8.2% it was supposed to be. Is it even possible for this to happen or did we do something wrong somewhere?

 

[Head First]

Yes this is possible. If the beer attenuation was higher than expected. Really need more info to reply properly.
What was original OG suppose to be and what was the actual OG?
What was the original FG and what was the actual FG?
Have you been doing proper temperature calculations for the readings?

 

[MartyWayne]

TARGET:
OG-1.083
FG- 1.021

WHAT WE GOT:
OG- @92 degrees 1.0925
FG- @66 degrees 1.0157

These gravity readings are already adjusted for the temperatures they were tested at.

Here is the website we used to adjust our hydrometer readings.
http://www.howtobrew.com/appendices/appendixA.html

 

[Head First]

Looks like your attenuation was higher than expected .That means the yeasties liked where they lived and liked what they ate. And the OG was also higher. The OG being higher can be caused by a number of variables. Was it all grain brewing? Then your efficiency was higher than predicted.If you were extract brewing it could be from many other variables, ppg's,weights or measure miscalculations etc etc etc. Keep records of everything and use good software such as is available on this site to calculate your brews. That will answer more questions for you than a forum. And brew on! Sounds like you got a good one there. First batch?

 

[Smitty27]

Which yeast was it? The last time I used Wyeast 3787 I ended up with 92.4% attenuation.