Belgian Dubbel OG Too Low

[scotchpine]

Brewed a Belgian Dubbel today and OG was 1.038. Target was 1.062. 5 gal batch. 10 lbs Bel Pale, .5 lb Bel Caramunich and .25 lb Bel Special B. 1.5 liq/grist ratio. Mashed @ 151 for 90 min. No mash out. 25 min sparge w/ 175 degree water. Collected 7 gal wort. 60 min boil with 1lb Bel Dk Candi Sudar at 10 min. I don't know why it's so low. I was wondering if I should add a pound of local raw honey to the fermenter once it gets going ( Wyeast 3787 ) to boost abv a bit. I know it will dry it out some more but hey, it's a Belgian Ale. Just wondering if it will thin to body out too much. Any thoughts?

[brewinhard]

I can only think of a few reasons why you're OG was so low.

1. Did you have a good crush for your grains?
2. Your sparge was a bit fast and also could have had some channeling going on. Try taking a thin spatula and make a checkerboard cross section in the top of your grain bed. This will help you to decrease channeling and increase your efficiency. Slow down your sparge a bit to give time for the sugars to be dissolved by your sparge water.
3. Did you hit your proper end boil volume?

If it were me, I would probably add some light pilsner DME to the beer to boost your gravity instead of honey.

[BDawg]

+1 on the fast sparge. I think that is definitely the reason here.
+1 also on "back filling" with DME. He may even want to steep a little bit of Special B to help plus up the flavor profile.

IMO, 175F is a bit high, too. You should be targeting your sparge to about 168F to help avoid tannin extraction. Pay attention to the pH also, as high pH (above 5. will extract tannins even more than the slightly high temp.

HTH-

[scotchpine]

Thanks for the replies. NB crushed the grains for me. I did'nt look closely at the crush though.There is a grain mill in my near future. Are you listening Santa? I had a brewing buddy helping me and he had his hand on the sparge tiller. I usually sparge about 40 mins to reach my pre bol volume for 5 gal batch. The sparge water temp was all on me though. I gotta quit drinking when I'm brewing. Volume was ok. I am having some issues with my SS braid staying in place though, so I'm gonna work on that. I had no more grain to use and used the last of my DME making the starter so I did add the honey. I'll update on how it turns out. BTW, I don't remeber 3787 throwing so much sulfer when I used it before. It about ran us out of the house the next night. Pitched at 69 and sitting at 71 now. I'm figuring it's just getting all that out of it's sytem and the beer will be sulfer free. I'll let it rest at 75 before it's done.

[Quin]

Did you remember to do a temp correction on that hydrometer reading?

[scotchpine]

If you mean for 60 degrees, then yes, thanks

[scotchpine]

Ok, I'm such and idtiot! When I said I didn't check the crush very close, I meant I didn't check it at all. I should have known better. I later thought that it wouldn't be worth trying to check it after the sparge and in the copmost pile. I went to dump some scraps there this am and when I looked down at the spent grain it was obvious that the grain wasn't crushed at all! I'm mad at myself but also pissed that NB charged me for crushed grain and sent me whole. It was on the packing list as crushed. Hard way to learn this lesson. Santa WILL be bringing me a grain mill. I wonder if I'm the only brewer who has ever done this At least it's good to know what the cause was so I can move on. I will now be checking all my orders more closley upon arival like weighing out my hops and grain ect. When the whole world is out to get you, being paranoid just makes good common sense. Thanks to all that tried to help me with this.