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Adjust Gravity tool calculation

tankseven

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Hi - This is my first post on Beersmith. I recently moved from extract brewing (~10 batches) to BIAB and also started using Beersmith for this batch. I have a question about the Adjust Gravity tool in Beersmith.

I was brewing a 5 gallon batch of Petite Saison with the following grain bill:
- 7lbs of Pilsner (2 row)
- 3.5lbs of Vienna Malt
- 0.75 of Torrified Wheat

After a 75 minute mash at 152 and a 10 minute mash out at 168, I ended up with an OG of only 1.020 instead of my estimated 1.041. I had a feeling this might happen, so I already had some DME on hand. I popped the calculations into Beersmith's Adjust Gravity tool:
- 1.020 for the Original Gravity (my actual pre-boil gravity)
- 8gal for the volume (my actual pre-boil volume)
- target gravity of 1.041 (my target pre-boil gravity)

It calculated 3.64lbs of DME to add. Well, I only had a 3lb bag on hand, so I dumped it all in at the beginning of the 90 minute boil. During the boil, the only other thing I did was add a total of 3oz of hops.

After the boil, I used the immersion chiller, followed by O2 in the carboy. I took my OG reading and was shocked to see 1.055. I had expected an OG of 1.048 if I had hit my pre-boil gravity.

What did I do wrong when calculating the amount of DME to add? Or did I add the DME too early in the boil? Are there any other variables I need to consider?

Thanks for the help!
TankSeven
 
You probably already thought of this but, did you adjust your SG readings for the temperature of the wort?

If the wort was 168 degrees when you took your first reading and the SG was 1.020 that adjusts to an OG 1.045.

Al
 
Ahhh...that's it! This was my first AG batch, so with extract I've only taken gravity measurements from room temperature. I had no idea you had to adjust for higher temperatures. I just found that Hydrometer Adjust tool in Beersmith which makes this easy. Thanks a lot! It's also good to know my efficiency wasn't that bad!

Cheers!
TankSeven
 
Your efficiency is pretty good.  Oh well, you have a nice strong beer to look forward to now.

Al
 
Thanks again for your help. After fermenting for a couple of weeks, my gravity got all the way down to 1.000. When I plugged that into BeerSmith, the Measured ABV now has a yellow dot beside it (instead of the blue dot).

Here are the measurements in BeerSmith:
- Est Original Gravity: 1.048
- Meas OG: 1.055 (after adding the 3lbs of DME to the boil as mentioned in my post above)
- Est Final Gravity: 1.009
- Measured FG: 1.000
- Est ABV: 5.2%
- Measured ABV: 7.2%

All of the "dots" beside these numbers are blue except for the Measured ABV. Is this due to such a large variance from the estimated ABV? I couldn't find anything in the help section of BeerSmith. Thanks!
 
You got me on that one. I've noticed the dots but don't know what they mean. I hope someone will explained that, I'm curious too.

Al
 
I just looked at several recipes in BeerSmith and discovered that if you hover the cursor over the dot a message window will open and tell you what the color means.

Al
 
Thanks, Al. I'm using BeerSmith 2 on a Mac and it doesn't show anything when I hover over the dot. When I hover over the field itself, there's a pop up that explains what the field is measuring - but nothing when I hover over the dot.

Cheers
TankSeven
 
It is basically the same as the slider on the left side; yellow means your low, blue within the peramiters and red above BJCP guidelines for your style of beer.

CORRECTION:

Yellow = at the edge of the recommended style range
Blue = OK
RED = well above/below recommended style range

Al
 
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