I know there are several questions on the forum about OG being lower than predicted. Please bear with me though. I'm at a loss. I just brewed a straightforward extract wheat beer recipe. The fermentables were:
- 0.5 lb Crystal 60L, steeped in 0.5 gallons 150F water for 20 minutes, sparged (rinsed) with 0.5 gallons 150F water
- 5.5 lb Briess light DME
- 0.5 lb Briess wheat DME
My recipe listed the OG as 1.051-1.053. Beer Calculus puts it at 1.055. My OG reading came in at 1.090. That's really, really high. What gives. Here's what I can rule out:
- Inaccurate hydrometer. I tested it in 60F water and it reads 1.000.
- Added too much DME. I quadrouple checked. I used a 5 lb sack of light DME from Austin Homebrew. I measured another 0.5 lb, and measured out 0.5 lb of wheat DME. I did not weigh the 5 lb sack to ensure it was 5 lbs. The label does say 5 lb.
- Final volume - I used 5.5 gallons of spring water today - 2.5 in the boil, 3 to top off the fermenter.
Possible causes:
- Hop debris. I did not filter the wort when pouring it into the fermenter. The sample I took for the OG had a lot of pellet hop debris in it. Could this provide lift to the hydrometer?
- Poorly mixed wort. I poured the 2.5 gallons of cooled wort into the fermenter then added 3 gallons of bottled spring water. Maybe it wasn't thoroughly mixed?
Have you ever seen this issue? I could understand a few points, but 35 points?