Brew Kit - Original SG Way High

[Goose & Bella Brewing]

Hoping to get a little insight on a problem I had with a recent batch I brewed from a Brewer's Best Kit.

I was making their oatmeal stout. Have had success with an IPA and Pilsner.

I will be making an extract recipe from this forum next weekend but wanted to brew another batch while I'm waiting on a few ingredients.

Anyway I've gone over the instructions 3x and made sure I followed Everything to a T. However my original SG was somewhere around 1.130 (supposed to be around 1.050-1.060). The only thing that I can think of is the wort got very hot right after I added the LME and DME and boiled over.

Any ideas what I could have done to cause this? Obviously being a brewers best kit everything was premeasured. Don't want to make the same mistake when put together my upcoming recipe.

Thanks!

 

[Nosybear]

Somehow there isn't enough water. After you steeped the grains, did you top the water up? I'm assuming a five gallon kit, three gallon boil with top-up afterward. If I assume you started with three gallons of wort in your pot after the steep, an hour's boil would have boiled off about 0.75 - 1 gallon of water. Assuming 2 and an OG of 1.055, this boil would have left you with a 1.1375 concentrated wort, 7.5 gravity points higher than what you measured.

So I'll assume you didn't top the wort up to 5 gallons by adding water after the boil. Can that be the problem?

 

[Goose & Bella Brewing]

Somehow there isn't enough water. After you steeped the grains, did you top the water up? I'm assuming a five gallon kit, three gallon boil with top-up afterward. If I assume you started with three gallons of wort in your pot after the steep, an hour's boil would have boiled off about 0.75 - 1 gallon of water. Assuming 2 and an OG of 1.055, this boil would have left you with a 1.1375 concentrated wort, 7.5 gravity points higher than what you measured.

So I'll assume you didn't top the wort up to 5 gallons by adding water after the boil. Can that be the problem?

Yes it was a 5 gallon kit.

So after the boil i added 2.5 gallons of springs water. Then got the high reading and added more water, remeasured and was still near 1.12ish.

I added the yeast and it was bubbling pretty consistently the next morning. And last night it was like fireworks inside the wort.

 

[jmcnamara]

Wort was cooled when you measured? Hydrometer working correctly?
Maybe you just got a really high gravity sample if it wasn't fully mixed after topping off

 

[Goose & Bella Brewing]

Wort was cooled when you measured? Hydrometer working correctly?
Maybe you just got a really high gravity sample if it wasn't fully mixed after topping off

It was my first time using a wort chiller so it was cooled. Not being mixed enough is definitely a possibility because I mixed the wort and water in a carboy and stirred using the siphon hose instead of the fermenting bucket and then siphoned it into the cylinder.

Thanks!

 

[Nosybear]

Pretty certain it's what JC indicates - not well mixed. Although to come out that close to the gravity of the partial boil is pretty amazing coincidence. So, kind of a checklist:
1. Wort properly diluted
2. Wort stirred to ensure uniformity
3. Hydrometer reading correctly
4. You somehow magically created sugar
Cooling the wort results in an increase in gravity so I didn't include it in my list.

 

[BOB357]

Pretty certain it's what JC indicates - not well mixed. Although to come out that close to the gravity of the partial boil is pretty amazing coincidence. So, kind of a checklist:
1. Wort properly diluted
2. Wort stirred to ensure uniformity
3. Hydrometer reading correctly
4. You somehow magically created sugar
Cooling the wort results in an increase in gravity so I didn't include it in my list.

One more to add:
Hydrometer bottoming out in test jar.

 

[Hawkbox]

Yeah I'd try and pull another sample and see if it still reads that high. If so, next question, how many tins of LME and how many kg of DME did you put in? We can kind of eyeball the math from that too.

Worst case you're gonna have a strong ass beer you can water down before packaging and make 10 gallons of!