crap hydrometer??

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TheMortReport

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so my roommate, apparently not realizing glass hydrometers are fragile, shattered mine. I borrowed one from a friend since my new one was not going to show up in time for my brew.

So I brewed a stout, plugged all the info into beer smith, partial.
7 lb dark DME
8 oz brown sugar
8 oz molasses
4 oz lactose

Beer smith says OG should be around 1.089, but when I checked it after I topped it off to 5 gallons it came in around 1.033. I saved the sample to test when I get a new hydrometer, because that reading just seems way off.

So my question to some of the more experienced brewers than me of 12 batches, is it at all possible I messed something up in the boil or is the hydrometer probably just showing a bad reading? I dont see how there is anything I could have done to make it that low

-Thanks all
 
Did you mix the top off water in well? Probably just wasn't mixed well enough And got a watered down reading. Just my thought.
 
I have seen some crappy hydrometers where the paper inside actually slides back and forth inside the glass tube. So depending upon where the paper is, the gravity reading changes.
 
Are you sure it was mixed up good after you added the top off water. That would be my guess. It is pretty hard to miss your gravity on a extract brew. If everything was measured and mixed correctly you should be right on target.
 
TMR,

As stated already, did you mix well? Even if you did gravity readings can be a bit misleading on wort that has been topped of with water. I've even found that true with all grain mashing occasionally when second runnings low SG wort is mixed with first high gravity runnings.

Following is a post from Revvy on the issue. Hopefully he can provide you much better guidance.

Revvy said:
Hi, welcome.

You probably came here today because you just got your first kit, and you did what it said it all the books and all the forums, and you tried out your hydrometer for the very first time...and the reading makes no sense.

Yes it is important to get in the habit of using one, especially if you start brewing all grain. But when you start with extract brewing, like most of us did, the first reading can be a bit on the confusing side.

You didn't do anything wrong. In fact nothing's wrong at all.

We get this question 3-4 times every day, so you're not alone. And in reality, nothing's wrong.

It's a pretty common issue for ANYONE topping off with water in the fermenter (and that includes partial mashes, extract or all grain recipes) to have an error in reading the OG...In fact, it is actually nearly impossible to mix the wort and the top off water in a way to get an accurate OG reading...

Brewers get a low reading if they get more of the top off water than the wort, conversely they get a higher number if they grabbed more of the extract than the top off water in their sample.

RM-MN has a great analogy;



When I am doing an extract with grain recipe I make sure to stir for a minimum of 5 minutes (whipping up a froth to aerate as well) before I draw a grav sample and pitch my yeast....It really is an effort to integrate the wort with the top off water...This is a fairly common new brewer issue we get on here...unless you under or over topped off or the final volume for the kit was 5 gallons and you topped off to 5.5, then the issue, sorry to say, is "operator error"

More than likely your true OG is really what it's supposed to be. And it will mix itself fine during fermentation.

And just use the number it says in the instructions as the true OG, because it will be.

So the answer is, relax and do nothing.

Like 99% of everything else in brewing. Just relax, and everything will be fine.

:mug:
Click to expand...
 
You topped it off, and that will almost always give a bad reading
Dont worry, if the amounts are correct the predicted OG is correct.
 
Thanks all

I feel awfully dumb not thinking about the whole topping off thing because that's exactly what happened. I thought I was over the rookie mistakes haha
 
TheMortReport said:
Thanks all

I feel awfully dumb not thinking about the whole topping off thing because that's exactly what happened. I thought I was over the rookie mistakes haha
Click to expand...

Look on it this way. You are always a rookie if you are doing something that you have not done before. If you try a new technique or modify a recipe then you are a rookie at that. If you stop being a rookie you have given up learning and growing.
 
I am still quite the noob myself but couldn't you verify the hydrometer is reading accurately by checking it in pure water and the reading should be ~1.000?
 
One other thing you can do though, and you _should_ do, any time you start to use a new or unfamiliar hydrometer, is to check it for accuracy / calibration.

Fill your sample jar with distilled water, ideally at the temperature the hydrometer is calibrated for. Then measure the SG of the distilled water - it should read 1.000 - if it does not, you now know the correction factor for this hydrometer. I recently picked up a pair of new ones and tested them in this way, and I found that one was off by .001, the other off by .002, so I marked their containers and I know to correct their readings appropriately.
 
stratslinger said:
One other thing you can do though, and you _should_ do, any time you start to use a new or unfamiliar hydrometer, is to check it for accuracy / calibration.

Fill your sample jar with distilled water, ideally at the temperature the hydrometer is calibrated for. Then measure the SG of the distilled water - it should read 1.000 - if it does not, you now know the correction factor for this hydrometer. I recently picked up a pair of new ones and tested them in this way, and I found that one was off by .001, the other off by .002, so I marked their containers and I know to correct their readings appropriately.
Click to expand...

Actually, you can use plain old tap water for this. The amount of dissolved solids in tap water aren't really enough to affect the density by even .001 units.
 
With the fermentables you have this will be a 100% efficient batch. Whatever the expected OG is shall be the actual. I did not take the time to calculate the expected OG but just wanted to point out that there is not conversion or extraction.
 

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