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First AG missed gravity by .005

kkipp9

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I did my first all grain batch today.  I missed my gravity into the fermenter by .005.  I cannot figure out where it has gone wrong.  My volumes were all within a quart of where they should be.  My pre-boil gravity was within .001 of predicted.  It is baffling me.  I used a batch sparge.  Drained the tun completely, poured in sparge stirred and left sit for 15 minutes then ran into the pot. I cannot figure it out.  If volumes are good and the pre-boil was good then where did I lose .005?  Please give me some pointers.  Still gonna be a good porter, just want to dial things in.  Thank you for reading.
 
You don't give a batch size, but it sounds like your boil off was not as high as you have it set in BeerSmith (I am assuming that you ended up 5 points low in your OG reading). 

Also, just to check the obvious, you did take the readings at room temperature, right?

 
Sorry about that.  Five gallon batch.  The weird part is that Beersmith predicted five gallons into the fermenter,  and that is exactly what I got.  I took my readings at higher temperatures for pre-boil and adjusted with the Beersmith tools.  Does it not give a true reading that way?  I had it set for half gallon lost to trub.  I actually had a quart left in the pot.  That tells me that my boil off was somewhere around 1.25 gallons.  Maybe I should just be happy that my first all-grain came out this close?  Thanks for the reply.
 
For the first brew with a new system, you are doing fairly well, IMHO.  I found that it takes around three brews of information and adjustment to get BeerSmith  dialed in to your system.  Given your readings, you can adjust the boil off rate to match what you measured. 

I have always chilled my sample for gravity readings with an ice bath since my first couple of brews because I do not trust the readings at high temperatures.  You are really trying to read a moving target as the wort is cooling in your graduated cylinder and you are trying to see what the hydrometer reading is at.  For quick chilling, I have a stainless steel bowl and a mason jar.  I take my sample at about 400 ml in the mason jar and put a cap on it which has a hole drilled to allow me to put a thermometer down into the wort.  I then place the jar in the bowl and add cool water, followed by ice.  It takes around 7 to 10 minutes for the sample to chill down to the calibration temperature of the hydrometer.

 
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