Anyone ever had an original gravity reading of 1.090 for a Pilsner? This is my first batch of home brew and the ingredient kit says it should have an o.g. of 1.042-1.044. Any help or advice is appreciated.
Kyle
Nope. Can you explain things a bit - did you use the right amount of water to reach your end volume, including evaporation from the boil ? How did you take your gravity reading -and was it using a hydrometer or refractometer ?
Used the right amount of water. 2.5 gallons to boil wort, then after I cooled it to pitching temp, I used the hydrometer to get a reading. Then, I added it to the carboy and filled with bottled water to the 5 gallon mark. Would it be off because I took the measurement before adding the water?
Yep… You should have taken it after adding your top off water. You should be good with the gravity being in the target range.
so I’m screwed when it comes to getting the correct abv, then? No use in taking a final gravity???
Why do you say that?
You have the original gravity, which is about half of your measurement or 1.045.
For sure take a final reading, now way to know it is done without it. I think you are about dead on for your og.
You do want to measure after diluting. Cool your wort, add the water, mix it really well, pull a sample.
You can calculate your OG.
OG= (90*2.5/5)/1000+1= 1.045
Brewers use that math all the time when topping up with water. The math is more accurate than trying to take a gravity reading after adding water because it takes a while for the water and wort to mix good enough for a reliable SG reading.
+1
Awesome. Thanks guys. I thought I completely screwed the pooch on my first batch. Thanks Alestateyall for the math. I’ll use that for the next brews.
I don’t mean to be snarky at all so don’t take this the wrong way but it sounds like you are completely lost and shooting in the dark at this thing. I highly recommend a good homebrewing book or start at www.howtobrew.com so that you get a better understanding on what you are doing. At the very least exploding bottles can be dangerous.
Assuming it’s mostly malt extract in there, you can safely assume that your OG is close to the kit’s numbers. Other than mis-measuring your water there isn’t really any way to modify it.
I don’t know whether the reason for this is obvious at first, but it’s worth understanding what’s going on in this calculation because it’s so fundamental to what we’re doing here. From your measurement of 1.090, we know that you had 90 points per gallon (which you’ll see referred to as PPG), and you had 2.5 gallons of wort, so the dividend is saying that you have 225 gravity points in your carboy. That amount of sugar stays fixed unless you add more or take some out. Now, you dilute this by adding another 2.5 g of water to get a total of 5 g of wort. The part in parenthesis now tells you that you have 225 gravity points in 5 g of wort, or 45 PPG. Dividing by 1000 and adding 1 gets you to your calculated SG of 1.045.
Anyway, stare at that equation until it makes perfect sense, and you’ll know something key to brewing beer. A great online resource for getting your arms around this is http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter3-4.html.
Great explanation.
This assumes that you know the wort volume in the fermenter, before topping up with water. Just pointing that out because we’re all assuming it was 2.5 gal, but if that was the pre-boil volume, the volume in the fermenter would be somewhat less.
This, however, will always be true.
Just wanted to add that a very common newbie mistake is taking the reading after topping up but without stirring it in very well. You need a good, well-mixed, uniform mixture to get an accurate reading. Otherwise, you don’t really know whether you snagged the sample wort from the heavy, sugary part or from the dilute part. Mix it in well, and you’ll be good to go.
HTH-
How much water did you have to add to get to 5 gallons?
The other error that sometimes gets even experienced homebrewers is not having enough wort in the cylinder so that the hydrometer is actually sitting on the bottom and not floating. That will cause very high readings.
+1 Yep. Did it myself on my second batch, and since it was extract, I was very confused about what I had done wrong. Since there was a lot of trub in the sample jar, I thought that might have something to do with it, so I stirred the crap out of it and sampled again.
And I’ll add that it’s VERY difficult to get it mixed well enough to get an accurate reading. It’s usually much more accurate to either calculate it, or make sure you get the correct volume in your fermenter and trust what the kit or recipe tells you.