Low O.G. Possible Solution

Hi all, I'm a relatively new brewer and I've seen a lot of low O.G. posts in here. I faced the same problem for my first 3 all grain brews and I finally determined what was wrong (rookie mistake, but might help out some of the other rookies on here). I checked the typical resources (Beersmith blog which has an article on low o.g. as well as this forum), but my problem was slightly different from what I read. I use BeerSmith and the recipes I made were for 5 gallons (5 gallons into the fermenter that is). So, the grain bill I chose with that software (and resulting o.g.) was based on 5 gallons after the boil into the fermenter - this meant roughly 6 gallons preboil into the kettle from the mash-tun assuming the 1 gallon would boil off in an hour boil. My problem was that a gallon didn't always boil off in a hour with my equipment and I would have slightly more volume post boil going into the fermenter (I think I had 5.5 gallons typically into the fermenter). This resulted in a more diluted beer with a lower o.g. than planned since the recipe had a grain bill based on only 5 gallons.

My 3rd batch where I found this error had the following specifics: I was shooting for 1.072 into the fermenter for 5 gal, but read 1.064 for a measured 5.75 gal (maybe I sparged a little too much here and had 6.25 gal preboil as opposed to the planned 6 and, on top of that, not a whole gallon boiled off). When I plugged the adjusted volume into Beersmith the o.g. went down to exactly 1.064, so I was spot on gravity-wise, but off volume-wise.

A few things I can think of to correct this: Add calculated amount of DME to increase o.g. (what I did). Boil for longer to get correct volume. Make sure you're measuring the correct volumes in the first place so your beer isn't diluted (know your equipment).

Hope this helps anyone having the same rookie issue as I was.