1st time brewing tomorrow and having some recipe issues!

[NCbeerpirate]

Hey BN Army,
Tomorrow's my first attempt at brewing and I'd love your input on my recipe. I'm doing an extract batch trying to make a Dunkel clone of my wife's favorite beer. This is the the recipe I'm looking at doing. I am using BeerSmith and the all grain to extract conversion really changes everything(color, OG, etc). Any thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

6lbs of Liquid Wheat Extract
2lbs of Liquid Amber Extract
.75lb of Honey Malt
.50lb of Roasted Wheat
.5oz of Chinook added at the start of the 90min boil.
I'm also going to use the German Wheat yeast (Wyeast #3333)

The original had an SRM of 25, and then the extract changed it to 20.

Thanks!
Alan

[Mike_n_dax]

If you are worried about color you could bump up your Roasted Wheat "slightly" it wont take much maybe look at 9 or 10 oz.

Do you have a Yeast starter going yet?

[brodie113]

I would probably not boil an extract recipe batch for 90 mins. Go for a 60 min boil and adjust the hops accordingly to hit the same IBUs.

[brodie113]

I would probably not boil an extract recipe batch for 90 mins. Go for a 60 min boil and adjust the hops accordingly to hit the same IBUs.

[NCbeerpirate]

Update: I finished brewing earlier tonight and everything went great, but I had a major issue turn up.

From the original recipe, I actually upped the Honey Malt to a lb and then the Roasted Wheat was traded out for Carafa II, using half a lb.

Started out with 3 gallons in my pre-boil and then it reduced to 2.25 gallons after my 60minute boil. Great...then after letting it cool and transferring it to the fermenter, I added the extra 3gallons of water and took my gravity reading. Somehow, the OG came up at. 1.017...WAY too low and definitely not what BeerSmith gave me as the OG I should have.

I decided not to touch is and then let it go, but I was wondering if anyone knew what I did wrong or what I could have done to fix it at that time. Thanks for the help!

Alan

[Henning1966]

Update: I finished brewing earlier tonight and everything went great, but I had a major issue turn up.

From the original recipe, I actually upped the Honey Malt to a lb and then the Roasted Wheat was traded out for Carafa II, using half a lb.

Started out with 3 gallons in my pre-boil and then it reduced to 2.25 gallons after my 60minute boil. Great...then after letting it cool and transferring it to the fermenter, I added the extra 3gallons of water and took my gravity reading. Somehow, the OG came up at. 1.017...WAY too low and definitely not what BeerSmith gave me as the OG I should have.

I decided not to touch is and then let it go, but I was wondering if anyone knew what I did wrong or what I could have done to fix it at that time. Thanks for the help!

Alan

Well If this was formulated for a 5 gallon batch. You had 2.25 at the end of the boil and you added 3 gallons of top up water then you over shot your top up water by a 1/4 gallon. If that is correct it would explain why your og was lower than expected. Don'w worry it will make beer maybe not the intended beer. But beer non the less learn from it and drink the unintended session beer.

[Mike_n_dax]

[u][/u]

Update: I finished brewing earlier tonight and everything went great, but I had a major issue turn up.

From the original recipe, I actually upped the Honey Malt to a lb and then the Roasted Wheat was traded out for Carafa II, using half a lb.

Started out with 3 gallons in my pre-boil and then it reduced to 2.25 gallons after my 60minute boil. Great...then after letting it cool and transferring it to the fermenter, I added the extra 3gallons of water and took my gravity reading. Somehow, the OG came up at. 1.017...WAY too low and definitely not what BeerSmith gave me as the OG I should have.

I decided not to touch is and then let it go, but I was wondering if anyone knew what I did wrong or what I could have done to fix it at that time. Thanks for the help!

Alan

Well If this was formulated for a 5 gallon batch. You had 2.25 at the end of the boil and you added 3 gallons of top up water then you over shot your top up water by a 1/4 gallon. If that is correct it would explain why your og was lower than expected. Don'w worry it will make beer maybe not the intended beer. But beer non the less learn from it and drink the unintended session beer.

Alen, Like the above brewer suggested don't worry about the gravity being off. you will still have beer in the end. also
this is something I forgot when brewing my beer this week end:
Beer Smith has a converssion chart to properly figure out how much water (or wort) to add to to reach a Specific Gravity reading.
Go to "Tools" Look for "Dilution Tool". this should help you figure out how much water to add inorder to reach the Begining Gravity you are wanting.

[Afterlab]

Started out with 3 gallons in my pre-boil and then it reduced to 2.25 gallons after my 60minute boil. Great...then after letting it cool and transferring it to the fermenter, I added the extra 3gallons of water and took my gravity reading. Somehow, the OG came up at. 1.017...WAY too low and definitely not what BeerSmith gave me as the OG I should have.

Something seems very odd about the numbers here. I could be mistaken and don't take this the wrong way but I'm not sure it is even possible to miss an OG for a extract/partial mash batch by nearly 42 gravity points. I think your gravity is actually much higher than 1.017. With 8# of liquid extract in a 5 gallon batch I roughly get a 1.057 starting gravity. If you were to have only used the 2# of amber extract you would be at 1.014. So really I can't think of any reason why that 6 pounds of extract sugar would have disappeared during the mix. Unless you had a crazy wild yeast take over during the boil or you spilled a TON of LME on the stove, your sugars should be in there. Gently swirl your carboy again to mix everything up and take another sample.

1. The only things I can think of would be that the extract and the water didn't mix well enough during the boil and all the extract settled out at the bottom and became sludge.

2. A large portion of the clean fermentable wort was mistaken as trub and not poured into the fermenter

3. After adding 3 gallons of water in the fermenter, the wort sample you took the reading from didn't have an even mixture of wort. i.e. it was mostly water and a little bit of wort thus giving you an inaccurate representation of your wort's sugar composition.

4. Your hydrometer sample was too warm when you checked your gravity

5. You forgot to add your liquid wheat extract